Hudson Hornet finds its way back to Bloomington

That split front windshield. That hood ornament. Those triangle vent windows in the back. The top, rusting away.

These are among the things I love about Tim Lloyd’s latest car purchase, a raggedy old 1952 Hudson Hornet. Lloyd has a passion for old Hudsons, especially ones such as this that show their wear, cars that earned their dull, vintage patina.

So he adds this 66-year-old automobile to his Hudson corral.

He sent a picture of the sticker on the driver’s side door panel, then told the car’s story. There’s one behind all of his old Hudsons, including this one that was purchased new in the Daviess County town of Washington, then sold to a Bloomington man in 1964.

“His ownership lasted approximately 25 years. It was serviced at Hartsock’s Texaco back in the ’70s, and that is where I first encountered it. The car still wears a service sticker signed by Larry on the door from where it had been in for an oil change and lube job.”

Even back then, as a teenager, Lloyd wanted to buy that car. But the owner had no intention of selling. Ever. “He planned on keeping it,” Lloyd recalled. When the man died about 1990, the car had just crossed the 47,000 mile mark on the odometer. It ended up in Michigan.

“I always wondered what became of this Hornet. I never forgot about it. Truth is that in my mind, I always thought this would be my first Hudson. Each time I would drive down the street where I used to see it sitting in the garage when the door was open, I hoped that it still existed.”

This past summer, he found out the old Hornet was still around when a friend and fellow Hudson collector in Indianapolis described a car he had purchased. “He told me that it had been in Monroe County, and upon telling me the name on the paperwork, I gave him a description of the car. He informed me that I would be disappointed in its current state.”

The car had ended up in someone’s back yard in Indianapolis, concealed beneath a tarp, “its once-gleaming chrome and pretty two-tone blue paint replaced with rust and corrosion,” Lloyd said. “As is often the case with cars left outside with a tarp on them, they begin to rust from the inside out. So what you see on the surface is only a glimpse of the damage done underneath.”

But condition did not matter. “I always did want this car. He could tell, so he sold it to me.”

The 1952 Hornet has returned home, joining others of its kind out in Lloyd’s garage. He said the car was driven only 700 miles during all those years away from Bloomington.