We have heard these and almost similar remarks a number of times, mostly before the 30-year rule was introduced in 1986 (Cars 30 years old or more were then defined as veteran cars, and we did not have to pay import duty on them when bought abroad). Our goal was to restore and save as many of these forgotten and discontinued types, and we saved most of them. We made a lot of trips to see, trace and confirm possible tips of where to find them. The whole southern and middle of Norway have been searched many times, but northwards we have only been as far as Sandnessjøen (ca. 900 km north of Oslo). Some of the cars have been imported from Sweden, and we have had 7 trips to Stockholm to pick up cars and parts.

I have to go back to 1968 when I thought of starting a Hudson club. At that time I had an American Ford, and daily I was driving around in a 1955 Opel Captain. In the last part of the sixties American cars were not popular. Mostly mods and hooligans were driving such cars. When I got an offer on my Opel, which was in a very good shape, I got rid of it. My nice and fine Ford Customline was sold to a person in Østfold.

When I bought my Opel, a friend of mine (Jan Andersen from Rælingen) wanted to buy a hobby-car. "Jack please find me one, but it has to be something special. It has to be something I can almost be alone to own in Norway." I thought the idea was cool, but I had not expected to hear this from Jan since he had a very sober relationship to cars. Some weeks later there was an ad in Aftenposten. That was at the end of April 1968: "Hudson Wasp 1955 for sale cheap" followed by an Oslo phone number. I called Jan. He thought it was exciting, but he wondered how a Hudson 1955 looked like. I could not answer him at that time. I meant I had seen one at Økern in Oslo. There was written Hudson beneath the hood and had a distinctive shiny front. Could that possibly be a 1955 model? We called, and the car was not sold. It was parked at Steinsletta right outside Hønefoss (ca. 40 km northwest of Oslo). Jan was excited and wanted to drive to have a look at once. After one hour driving we were able to see this rare car for the first time. It looked very solid and nice. The colour was navy blue, it had a lot of nickel-plating and the interior was in good shape. Jan was very enthusiastic. This car was different, and he decided that he was going to buy this car. We were not able to start it, but we determined to tow it to Rælingen (right outside Oslo) because he just wanted to bring the car home at once. It certainly also helped when the owner told us that the Hudson-importer in Norway (Kolberg og Caspari) only had sold 3 cars in Norway.

The trip to Rælingen went smoothly. However, when matting the whole car before painting and cleaning it underneath before anti-rust treatment, a lot of surprises appeared. It was used glass fibre mat, steel stopper and pop rivets. The car had been worked on before, and the work was not good. Jan was put under stress, and as time went by with restoring he became tired of the whole project. "If the car is not approved by the Official Motor Vehicle Examiners or something more is showing up in the near future, I will sell the car." That was what he said when the car was ready for showing in the late summer of 1968. The car was approved, but a couple of months later he got problems with the brakes. Now he wanted to sell.

However, on behalf of myself I had started to look for a Ford. I wanted to have an American car again. When Jan was going to sell his car, I suggested: "Why not swap cars?" In that way I became a Hudson owner. The idea was to have this car for a short period until I could buy a new Ford. This "short" period lasted to January 3, 1978. Then the vehicle plates were removed for a new restoration. For ten years this car had functioned almost without any problems as a regular car used daily. It was also used for long trips, twice to Bodø (far up north in Norway) and three times to Gothenburg (Sweden). I became very pleased with that car.

A very good friend of mine, Frank Bastiansen, also liked that car very much. We were therefore chatting loosely about starting a "Hudson club". We both liked the step-down models from 1948 and up also. Eight or nine years passed by before this became a reality. It was not started as a club for a particular brand, but as a club for obsolete brands.

I had bought a Hudson Hornet 1957 from Furuset in Oslo in 1974. Originally I thought of using it as parts for the Hudson Wasp, but the car was too special. I just had to spare it for later on. When a friend of mine, Kurt Bødker, after a trip to Vestfold asked me: "Today Jack I saw a Willys passenger car in Sem (close to Tønsberg). It looked quite nice. Do you think it will be worth something in the future as a collector item?" I remembered a similar Willys driving around in Lillestrøm (ca. 20 km east of Oslo) in the sixties. That was a car in the Aero-series, and I said to Kurt: "Buy it Kurt! Then we start a club for the American brands having gone out of production in the fifties and sixties. At that time only Ford and GM "counted" as post-war models. We therefore decided to start from 1946 and up to the respective types came to an end. We originally determined to choose nine brands. That is what we have today. However, we changed our minds and decided to drop Frazer since no one could remember to have seen any Frazer and therefore impossible to get hold of (That was before the 30-year rule). From the Willys selection we determined to go for Jeepster and the Aero-series since Jeep already was taken care of by quite many collectors.

What should we call the club? We had eight makes of cars left to collect. We tried different ways of mixing letters and so on to achieve something rational. Having worked with several solutions Frank said: "Let us call the club The Eight Amcars Club." Everybody agreed. Frank was satisfied and so was I. Frank started immediately to draw the new emblem of the club. A little more than an hour later it was ready, and it is the same emblem we use today. Kurt then recruited a brother-in-law Kåre Hagen and a friend Tommy Vitaj as members.

The club EAC then started up June 30, 1977 in the manner we know today. We can safely say that we afterwards have been very loyal to the concept. A little more than two months later we got a workshop. A small part in a basement of a mink-feed kitchen was for rent, and we signed up. Everything was ok so far, and we felt happy. Some months later Frank brought a friend. His name was Arne Johannessen from Romsås in Oslo. After some trial time Arne became a member of the club in the autumn 1978.

How long would our joy last we thought? That was when we in the spring 1979 heard that our workshop was going to be used as a cold storage plant. I believe that we had 9 cars in our collection at that time which we thought was great. But we certainly hoped that EAC was not coming to an end because of that.

After a lot of inquiries, advertising etc. we received an answer in November 1979. We could then move into a barn at Skedsmokorset (20 km northeast of Oslo). The conditions there were not too good. That is far from an exaggeration. The wind was always blowing there, especially at wintertime. Therefore we had snow all around in the workshop and the cars most of the time. Because of that we were searching for satisfactory premises, and for a special reason we were looking for that in Sørum. During the time we stayed at Skedsmokorset our car-collection increased to 13 objects, and the club got two more members. They are still members today and their names are Bjørn Norstad and Knut Bekkevold.

In February 1981 EAC finally got some new premises in Sørum. The old guitar-factory at Lundermoen was empty, and we were able to rent it from Oddvar Hasle. That was like coming to a new world. There was room for twelve cars inside. The building had central heating, toilets, storerooms and a meeting room as well. It was quite nice, but a little un-functional for our purpose. I was built for guitar-production and not for restoring big American cars. In spite of that it functioned fairly well. As mentioned we had room for twelve cars. We were seven members and could be five more. Therefore we advertised in "Romerike Blad". The response was enormous, and we had to choose among the people being interested. We were wrong about a few, but among the persons answering on our advertisements the fall 1981 and spring 1982, we have four left today. They are Gudmund Tvedt, Tor Dybvik, Henrik Nilsen and Ketil Raaum. When Kurt wanted to quit in 1983, the Horne family joined up, first Morten, then Steinar and a year later Lars. At that time there was a great enthusiasm among the members. We traced a lot of objects and needed a place to store them.

The summer 1982 we found a place with a farmer at Gran, Hadeland (ca. 55 km north of Oslo). He was willing to help us moving the cars. We needed that since the number or cars had increased to 39 at the end of 1982. That was both registered cars and objects. We had a lot of heavy work during that period. It certainly required a lot of work and time to move so many cars over such a long distance. When the barn at Gran was filled up, we were tipped-off about another barn at Lunner, Hadeland. There we could rent the muck cellar, but we had to empty it first. That was quite a job and when finished, it was also filled up with cars and objects. At almost the same time we found and rented a place at the farm "Sørum Gård" in Gjerdrum.

The autumn 1989 we got a new member Olav Fløgstad. He was a farmer and wanted to help the club with more appropriate premises. The premises (his barn) were just great, both as a workshop and an all year garage for the cars being used for summer driving. In November 1990 we moved to "Fløgstad Gård"(35 km Northeast of Oslo). It was very comfortable. We had a lot of space, nice surroundings and the plans for the future were many and quite big. It was just a matter of trust.

The summer 1992 Steinar Horne managed to get hold of four Moelven barracks. He got them from a contractor at Auliefeltet, Nes. We hired a special transport and moved them to "Fløgstad Gård". Then we started a lot of voluntary work using those barracks to build a future clubhouse. Finally, after many hours of work, the clubhouse was finished to our 15-year anniversary late summer 1992. However, I want to mention one incident when we were working on the clubhouse. While we were installing the roof a storm turned up. A strong gust of wind caught the roof and lifted it over the barn towards the main building of Eva and Olav Fløgstad. We all remember the additional bill we got, the so-called "storm charges". We stayed at "Fløgstad Gård" for seven years.

Then we got the possibility to buy our own premises. That was a big step towards what we had dreamed about the summer 1977. At that time we thought that sometime in the future we could get our own premises with a workshop, a meeting room and a building site. There we would build a garage that could function as a museum. Those were things we thought about twenty years ago. In the meantime we have done as best as we could from what was possible. That is among other things to collect club-cars to fill a future museum. Today our collection is more than 270 cars divided among 68 members.

This flashback is such I remember in broad outline, but as you will understand quite many of us have used a lot of hours on this hobby. All the cars we have collected have their own history. It will take too long to tell them all. One of the toughest was when we picked up Lars Ullersmo´s Hudson in Sandnessjøen, and the largest disappointment was when Per Monsrud and Morten Flaen drove to Bergen to buy a 1954 Kaiser. That was assumed to be the only -54 model sold new in Norway. It was expected to be in reasonably good condition with very little rust. However, when they removed the car cover it was all rust. In spite of that and since they were going to pay for the car in Oslo, they decided to bring the "car" with them. When they arrived in Sørum, even less was left of the car. We did not pay very much for that car.

I mentioned that the trip to Sandnessjøen was tough, but we had one in January 3, 1985 being almost just as tough. We started driving at twelve o´clock at night heading for Stockholm. We were driving three cars, two of them towing trailers for cars and the last towing a regular one. We were going to pick up a 1955 Studebaker President, being owned by Hans Olstad today, and a 1951 DeSoto Sportsman, being owned by Tron Hildenbrandt today. When getting close to the east coast of Sweden, we ran into really bad snowy weather. We had to drive at a snail´s pace on the two-lane freeway leading to Stockholm, and we had to be very alert because we had to find an area with cabins 30 kilometers outside the city. Tor Dybvik and Erik Tveter were driving in the first car, Henrik Nilsen and I were driving in the next one.

Suddenly I saw the sign where we were going to take off. I flashed with my headlights, but they did not see it in the heavy driving snow. The rest of us then agreed that we should get off the freeway E-18. There was a bridge running across the road, and we decided to park on the other side of the freeway and flash our headlights when they came back. We got ready, but we had not been waiting very long when they showed up. They (Tor and Erik) were driving towards us with almost no visibility in the opposite direction of the traffic using the same lanes as when driving to Stockholm. We became quite pale when we saw that. When they discovered that they had been driving too far, they just turned around without thinking they were driving on a freeway.

One would think that such a frightening situation would be enough, but that was a little bit early to hope for. When we arrived at the place where the Studebaker was parked, we just chose to push it on the trailer the way it was parked. We would turn it around when we reached Stockholm so we could get the right ball thrust on the drag hook. The weather was cold and unpleasant, and it was still a little bit dark.

We then started to drive towards Stockholm. The speed was quite low, and it was obvious that Tor had a wrong ball thrust on his trailer with the Studebaker. Suddenly from driving next to the right shoulder Tor´s car was gaining too much speed, and he was all over the two lanes. He got some really bad swings on both the car and the trailer, and he used both lanes for several hundred meters. All other cars had to stop. We saw how Tor was struggling. He was working the steering wheel, brakes and gas pedal all at the same time. It did not seem like he was going to succeed. For us driving behind him it looked like he was going to crash, and he was heading towards the guardrail separating the ingoing and outgoing lanes on the freeway. Suddenly, just like a miracle, Tor got everything under control. The rest of the trip went fine. Tor´s comment to the whole incident was: "Shit! I worked the wheel like crazy, and I have never sweated like that before." The next day when we were going home, the weather was very nice, and we were happy we had managed this task.

Some days later I got a telephone call from Mr. Tolfsby at the Technical Museum in Oslo: " A Studebaker with a Mercedes front is parked in a garage in Sarpsborg, and it must be moved since the garage is going to be torn down." I got the name of the owner who lived in Oslo. He was contacted, and he told that the car had to be moved within two days. It was a Studebaker Lark 1962 in very good condition he said. He wanted 60,000 NOK for it. I asked him why he had not removed the car, and he told me he had no place to park it. Besides he had not seen the car for some years. We made it clear that with the price he wanted for the car, we were not really interested even to drive there and take a look. He asked us what we were willing to pay, and we said 4-5,000 NOK. We then got his mother´s telephone number in Sarpsborg.

Henrik and I drove down there. It was a Lark looking fairly nice, but the owners´s mother thought it looked quite bad. She meant it looked a lot nicer some years ago when the car was used. We told her that such an object needed a total restoration, and we had enough of them.

But since the garage was to be torn down the day after, we could take the car with us on the trailer. However, 1,000 NOK was all we could pay. She understood that, and was going to talk to her son about it, but it was ok that we took the car. We could twitch our mouths about most of our cars. All our cars have their own history, and quite many of them a Norwegian one.