Murray Hudson Model T Greater Eight Sport Roadster

Having made its name as "The World's Largest Builder of Six-Cylinder Cars" by 1913, the Hudson Motor Car Company held true to the genre for nearly two decades. The "Super Six" of 1916 was a tour de force , its counterbalanced crankshaft an industry breakthrough. "The Super-Six Principle Turns Waste Heat into Power," read the ads.

By the late 1920, however, the market demanded straight eights. It was the Packard Single Eight of 1924 that made the inline eight a practical and popular automobile engine. By 1929, eleven other manufacturers had them. For 1930, then, Hudson readied a straight eight. Derived from the already refined companion make Essex Six, it was smaller in displacement and slightly less powerful than the old Super Six. However, the new Great Eight was 500 pounds lighter and thus performed better.

Hudson offered boat-tailed roadsters only sporadically. In 1927 and 1929 there were Essex boat-tails, and then again in 1931. By this time Hudson and Essex shared bodies, so a Hudson Model T boat-tail was created and the bodies were built by Murray. It was the one and only time this style appeared on a Hudson chassis, so rare it never made the sales literature.