Car restoration leads... to local history connection

The 1950 Hudson Super Six might not sound or even look as sexy as a 1966 Ford Mustang, but when it hit the road, it was considered one of the high-performance cars of its era. One such Super Six currently being restored by Bart Hoover and his son, Cory, also has a local connection — it once belonged to Ken Herrick, son of Ray Herrick, who founded Tecumseh Products in 1934. Ken Herrick died in 2004.

Hoover, owner of Next Generation Automotive repair in Tipton with his wife, Jamie, discovered the connection when they started tearing out the interior of the car. Wedged into the glove compartment was a plastic bag with a small spiral notebook and an old State of Michigan red and white registration certificate. The registration named Kenneth Gilbert Herrick with a Red Mill Drive address in Tecumseh as the car’s owner. As he told the story, Hoover worked the notebook out of the plastic bag, opening the green cover to reveal painstakingly recorded details about the car and its owners.

The Hudson Car Company was launched in 1909 in Detroit by J.L. Hudson, who owned the iconic department store of the same name. The car company had a long and storied history on racetracks and in films, but like many other automobiles of the 20th century, it declined in popularity. The Hudson Car Company merged with Nash-Kelvinator in 1954 to form American Motors Corporation (AMC) and in 1957, the last Hudson rolled off the assembly line and into history.

But the Hoovers’ find serves as an important tool in the restoration process, in addition to its local connection. It has detailed notes about all the mechanical work done on the car in the last 50 years — a provenance not often found in an automobile from that era.

Herrick, the original owner of the car, parked the Hudson in the Tecumseh Products Airport hangar in 1970 where it remained until Herrick sold it to Doug Hargrave in 1991, according to the notes. In 2009, it was pulled out of Hargrave’s building. Considerable work was done on the car between 2009 and 2019, when the Hoovers purchased the car at an estate auction for the late Doug Hargraves, who died in 2018. “I think Mr. Hargrave had done some work on it,” Hoover said.

The Hudson doesn’t have its original engine — that was replaced sometime prior to 1970 with a 262 model from a 1952 Wasp, which was another popular