ON THE ROAD
‘Scruffy’ Nash has a tale to tell
Scruffy the car has led an interesting life.
Although the 1930 Nash 450 Single Six Series sedan is currently on static display in Heritage Park’s Gasoline Alley, the automobile has truly gone the distance.
“Scruffy is one of the few unrestored vehicles we have in our collection,” says Rebecca Schreiner, senior interpreter at Gasoline Alley. “When we got the Nash, we were specifically told never to restore the car.”
That’s because the late Brian McKay, the man who donated Scruffy to Heritage Park in 2009, believed the car told a better story in a preserved state.
McKay, born in Calgary, had long ago moved to Victoria, B.C., where he became a Nash aficionado. While restoring two Nash roadsters, McKay located the Nash 450. It was in a granary on a farm near Balzac, a tiny community just north of Calgary now better known as the location of Cross-Iron Mills shopping mall.
Parked for decades, the flathead six-cylinder Nash with wooden spoke wheels was reportedly originally from Saskatchewan. The story goes, the Nash quit sometime in the 1930s while being driven by a farmer and his family attempting a journey to find work and lodging farther west.
The car ended up parked on Alberta farmland, tucked into a granary, where a new owner attempted a fix.
With the Nash running, the car was entered into a demolition derby. That’s why there is white house paint brushed onto certain areas of the car. When it came time to enter the smash-up derby, however, the Nash refused to start. It was pushed back into the granary until it was rescued by McKay.
Originally bought for spare parts, McKay became charmed by the time-worn character of the Nash and he couldn’t bring himself to part out the car. Instead, he performed an extensive mechanical restoration. All moving parts were renovated, but everything else was left as found, including the many areas of exposed seat cushion stuffing and the numerous repairs found on the left front fender.
McKay once handed out a brochure about the Nash to help tell the car’s story. In that brochure, he wrote; “The front left fender of this car symbolizes the tenacity of these early people.”
He continued, “It has been repaired nine separate times. In 1937 rural Saskatchewan there were no paved roads. Gravel and mud and potholes were the norm and they would shake the car and eventually cause a break in the fender.”
On the Nash, the fender had been welded, riveted, re-welded, bolted and re-riveted.
“This fender was and is a symbol of those times, and is an original testimonial to the determination of the farmer who, both in the car and in his life, refused to give up,” McKay explained on paper.
Scruffy the Nash was ‘accessorized’ by McKay with everything a family fleeing dust bowl conditions might have possessed, with 1937 selected as the year of depiction.
McKay was fascinated by the Depression and chose to simulate what it might have been like to pull up stakes and leave home in search of a better life.
In 2004 on a flatbed truck he shipped Scruffy to Glen Ellyn, Illinois. From there, he drove the Nash across the United States, following — as much as possible — old Route 66. He travelled the road, without using motels or hotels or visiting fast-food restaurants.
He’d pitch a tent off the side of the Nash and cook his breakfasts and suppers on a circa 1927 kerosene camp stove.
Scruffy’s ‘sweet spot’ in terms of speed was about 30 miles per hour ( just under 50 km/h). Using maps from 1937, McKay navigated his way to Santa Monica, Calif. He arrived there six weeks after starting, and turned the car north up Highway 101 and home to Victoria.
When McKay learned he was facing terminal cancer, he made arrangements to have Scruffy permanently displayed in Gasoline Alley.
“We use the car as a visual aid to explain the Depression era,” Schreiner says.
“We tell Brian’s story about the car, and while we don’t know (who the original farmer was driving the Nash out of Saskatchewan) we tell a story about the Fehr family. They left Saskatchewan to homestead north of Peace River, and they had the worst luck you could have.”
Scruffy the 1930 Nash 450, preserved by McKay, is on permanent display in Gasoline Alley, home to one of the largest public collections of automobile signs, gas pumps and other petroliana. Originally amassed by Calgary’s Ron Carey, in 2002 a good portion of his collection was donated to Heritage Park. Built to house the exhibit, Gasoline Alley opened its doors early in 2009 and is open year-round (www. heritagepark.ca).