Ed Zern and the "Finest Outdoor Automobile of All Time"

To heck with what was certainly abysmal gas mileage, I say “finest” because the Nash Airflyte was the first automobile designed for for anglers and hunters who wanted a convertible bed on wheels, and because it inspired Ed Zern to write some of the best car ads of all time, according to Kit Kiefer in The New York Times. “Fly-fishing in the Catskills was the preferred sport of the outdoor writer Ed Zern, and the Au Sable was where Nash’s chairman, George Mason, persuaded Zern in 1950 to write the ads that did as much for Nash’s reputation as an outdoors vehicle as its comfy convertible beds. Nash began wholeheartedly pursuing hunting-and-fishing types after Mason went fly-fishing with Zern, illustrator and author of ‘To Hell With Fishing’ and an ad man on the Nash account.”