Collectors’ Driveway Could Be Called Nash-Ville

Before he married Wendy, it was love at first sight for Bob Walker. He set his eyes on the object of his affection in May, 1981, and fell head over heels--for a 1956 Nash Ambassador automobile.

“We wanted something that was unusual and different,” recalled Bob, who, like his wife, Wendy, is an old-car aficionado. “In old cars, there are a lot of ’55 Chevies around, ’57 Chevies, T-Birds. Everybody drives one.”

“We wanted something that would typify the ‘50s and yet be unusual and distinctive. Nash is one particular car that you don’t see too many of.”

“I wanted that car,” recalled Bob, a commercial radio announcer who lives in Anaheim, of the yearning that consumed him for half a year. “I had all the literature. I had the sales manuals. I had the sales brochures. I had the magazine ads. And every time I saw them, I’d get excited about it.

“It had only 18,000 miles on it!” Bob said in the way another man might about his high school sweetheart’s smile. “I kept on telling her about that car we saw.”

Wendy’s response was peculiar. “She kept stealing my literature and hiding it,” Bob said.

Bob figured that Wendy didn’t want him ruminating over the car and perhaps rushing out in a fit of passion to buy it.

What he didn’t know was that Wendy had bought the car on the sly shortly after they first saw it. For six months, she shuttled it between relatives’ and friends’ homes, hiding it from him.

“It was difficult,” she said.

But it made a swell Christmas present.

Not long afterward, Bob and Wendy decided that two people couldn’t be much more compatible, and they got married. After all, how many husbands and wives both actually like 1956 Nash automobiles?

Since then, the Walkers have added three more 1956 Nash Ambassadors to their driveway, making them, by their own estimate, the owners of more 1956 Nash Ambassadors than anyone in Orange County, perhaps even in the nation.

“They started multiplying in our front yard,” Wendy said. “I also gave him a car for Valentine’s Day.” A Nash, of course.

Bob became president of the Southern California chapter of the Nash Car Club of America, a 5,000-member organization. There are more than 150 members in the chapter, who together own perhaps 600 Nashes.

Although some collectors only display their cars, the Walkers drive theirs.

“We don’t own a contemporary car,” said Wendy, who extols the car’s sturdy construction. “You can’t kill them.”

Rugged as its cars were, Nash ultimately could not buck the domination of Detroit’s Big Three: General Motors, Ford and Chrysler. Nash merged with Hudson Motor Car Co. to form American Motors Co. in 1955, and the Nash was dropped two years later.

But for the faithful, Nash cars remain objects of endearment.

“They had the first air-conditioning system,” Bob boasted. “They had the first flow-through ventilation system, the first ‘unitype’ body that I know of. . . . The first seat belts. . . . The first one-piece all-steel top. The first undivided windshield on any car. The first padded dashboard.”

And then there is the Nash’s most notable feature: “The seats fold down into a bed.”

“Of course, when the date came to pick up the young lady in a Nash, the father wouldn’t let the young girl go out because he’d figure they were going to a drive-in,” Bob chortled.

“You never let your daughter go out with somebody in a Nash,” Wendy agreed.

The Walkers estimate that there are only about 800 1956 Ambassadors still around, from a production run of more than 8,000.

“We once did a count,” Bob said. “I don’t think there are more than 20 to 22 of the ‘56s that are on the road and running in all of Southern California.”

“They may not have been as popular as other cars in their years, but I find them attractive,” he said. “People who own these cars know each other and they know . . . where they are,” Bob said, adding, “we tend to keep an eye out for ones that are for sale, ones that are being traded.”

Although Nashes have found their way to the garages of flamboyant rock singers Joan Jett and Pat Benatar (her Ambassador has zebra-striped seat covers), the Walkers insist that Nash collectors are largely a conservative lot, much like their original owners.

Some, though, may prefer something flashier.

“I find them very attractive, but . . . my heart belongs to fins,” Wendy confessed. ‘If I was to have any automobile, I wanted something with fins.”

“After looking at all the cars, I decided the De Soto was probably the best choice.”

Consequently, Wendy has one car she calls all her own--a 1957 De Soto.

As if a parking lot full of 30-year-old automobiles were commonplace, Bob says his wife “does something very unusual.”

“I have probably the largest collection of antique bird cages . . . in the country,” Wendy says.