ClassicCar

Are the Ruskin bodies all steel? Les would know I'm sure!

It certainly needs quite a bit of work still. It looks identical to the one I looked at 5 years ago in Timaru, been dry stored since 1963, one farmer owner, still had brand-new yellow & black plates fitted! The price was around $12,000 and it was all original and in very good original condition compared to this one. It had been repainted though, and the upholstery had been covered with vinyl with the original woolcloth probably still fine underneath. Don't know where it went to. In the same basement was a 1902 De Dion, all original and in storage for goodness knows how many decades.

Are the Ruskin bodies all steel?

From memory Ruskin were doing all steel bodies from 1937, and were the first to do so down here.

How was the 4-door Ruskin body different from the conventional one that came from Detroit?

The front clip was all Hudson, as were the back mudguards (fenders), Ruskin did from the firewall back. The general appearance to the Detroit sedans was very similar in the 30s, there were a few detail changes such as the local cars having gutters above the doors. The LWB versions I've seen down here all have US bodies.

Ruskin bodied other American cars using the relevant front clip, and at a casual glance you would think they were using the same generic 4 door shell mated to a brand X,Y or Z front clip.

After WWII Ruskin continued to use their pre-war 30s style body shell, so differences with the 46 & 47 factory cars were of course much more obvious.