The Nash Motor Company

The Nash did not appear until 1917, but its predecessor, the Rambler, goes back to 1900. In that year the Chicago bicycle manufacturer Thomas B. Jeffery, who had been born in England, moved to Kenosha, bought a bicycle factory there, and began with his son to convert it into an automobile plant. Two years later they turned out their first cars, fifteen hundred of them, which qualified the Jefferys as mass producers for that time. After the father's death the son sold the plant to Charles W. Nash, formerly the president of Buick and of General Motors, who had quit both organizations over policy differences. Nash now had a free hand with what he renamed the Nash Motor Company, and he made it an instant success. He set up branch plants in Milwaukee, Racine, and Pine Bluff, Arkansas. By 1926 the Nash, though not a low-priced car, was a large seller, the seventh largest among all the numerous makes then on the market. In 1954, six years after Nash's death, the company was in difficulties, and to strengthen itself it merged with the Hudson firm, of Detroit, to form American Motors. More than twenty years later, still producing cars in Kenosha, American Motors was Wisconsin's largest employer.

Rev 2002-01-15