Nash survives the tip

Greg Wane
A 1926 Nash recovered from a landfill site at Modewarre has been brought back to its original glory by Belmont car enthusiast Ray Matthews.
“I bought the Nash from a farm at Moriac,” Ray said.
“It had been dumped into a landfill site at Modewarre. A scrap dealer had recovered it from the tip and sold it to a young farmer at Moriac, David Hutton.
“I bought the remains of the car from David in 1970.”
Ray said he didn’t think the Nash had been left for too long in the Modewarre tip.
“When I got it the bodywork had deteriorated quite a lot because somebody had placed super phosphate bags over the top of it,” Ray said.
He described the bonnet as resembling a lace handkerchief, with more rust holes than could be repaired.
Fortunately, Ray was able to buy another identical model Nash from Torquay to use body panels in the restoration.
“However, neither of the cars still had their original speedoes but I was fortunate to find another old Nash at Balliang that had been stripped down and used for spotlighting.
“It was in poor condition but it had a speedo. I bought the car for $10.
“After that I’ve never seen another Nash since – they might have been the only three in the area.”
The first part of the restoration required the body to be lifted off the chassis. Ray supported it on four 44 gallon drums in his cramped garage.
“Each day I pushed the chassis and running gear out into the carport where I could work on it,” he said.
Ray believed the Nash cars were mostly imported as running chassis, with the bodies built locally. However, he had since discovered his car was fully imported.
“When I got the car most of the accessories were missing but I was able to get most of them by going around to all the swap meets,” Ray said.
“I had to remake the hood and I had to build the hood bows from timber I made the bows up.”
Ray was advised to contact renowned Geelong auto trimmer Charlie Scherson, who was about to retire, but there was a possibility he wouldn’t get the seats and hood made.
“By the time I got to him, during the 1970s, he had retired but he agreed to come out of retirement and do the car at his home for me. He did a lovely job of it,” Ray said.
“At that stage he was in his early’ 70s. Because of the urgency to get Charlie to do the trimming job because of his age, I did the restoration back to front and ended up getting the hood and seat upholstery done before I did any work restoring the body.”
Ray said the motor was original and required little work. It is a six-cylinder, side-valve engine with three-inch (75mm) diameter pistons, which is about a two-litre, and puts out about 21 horsepower.
The car can cruise at 38 mph “although if it gets up to 40 it starts to get a little bit frenzied,” Ray laughed.
The car was still running with the original pistons and original radiator, he said.
“The Nash car company was also ahead of their time in 1926 when they introduced anti theft devices to their cars,” Ray said.
“The car has a means of locking the gearbox with a large Yale key, so it can’t be operated and the spare wheel, that is mounted at the back, has a large padlock securing the wheel to the car.”
Ray said the restoration took about 1000 hours to complete.