The fascinating history of American cars . . .one story at a time.
Author: Deb Tracy
I am a reformed attorney who has returned to my first loves, American history and classic cars. Raised in a family of automobile fanatics, my Dad is one of those guys who can look at a set of tail lights and tell you what car they belong to and follow that with a story about one he owned. Forget the “new car” smell, I love the smell of old cars and old garages. My husband (retired law enforcement and former U.S. Marine) and I turned our hobby into a business a few years ago and now happily deal in classic cars and their various parts. We live in rural Nebraska with our amazing teenage daughter and a houseful of border collies.
This adorable turquoise and white Metropolitan was sold at a recent auction in our area:
This is a 1958 model, but the Metropolitan was first introduced by Nash in 1954 after 11 years of research in the small-car field. It was not intended to replace the family car but to “provide a discriminating answer for the suburban housewife” as a second car. The diminutive Metropolitan had a wheelbase of only 85 inches, an overall length of 149.5”, width of 61.5” and height of 54.5”.
In order to keep production costs down, Nash farmed out the manufacture of the Metropolitan to Austin in Birmingham, England. It was initially powered by the A-40, a 4-cylinder OHV 42-hp Austin engine, had a top speed of around 80 mph and achieved 40 mpg at “normal highway speeds”. The A-40 was replaced by the larger 52-hp A-50 in 1956.
In 1954, the hardtop sold for $1445 and the convertible for $1469. The Metropolitan incorporated many of the styling details of the full-size Nash automobiles, but was said to feature “the foreign look” (as if that were a good thing) while still being built to American standards.
The Metropolitan survived Nash’s merger with Hudson and the creation of the American Motors Corporation, but it’s styling was dated by the time the 1960s rolled around and the last Metropolitans were sold in 1962.
Sources:
“Nash Motors Unveils New Small Car.” The Chattanooga Times, 18 March 1954, p. 45.
“Nash Motors Unveils the Metropolitan.” The Selma Times-Journal, 21 March 1954, p. 25.
“Nash Offers Newest Small Car.” The Miami News, 19 March 1954, p. 20-A.
“Nash Unveils 40 Miles Per Gallon Model.” Pittsburgh Sun Telegraph, 18 March 1954, p. 8.
“New Nash Metropolitan Features Economy, Ruggedness, Fine Styling.” The Knoxville Journal, 18 March 1954, p. 12.
“New U.S. Cars Combine Beauty, Style, Economy.” The Iola Register, 11 March 1954, p. 12.
Minden, Nebraska, hosted a car show around the town square this weekend, and it was a beautiful setting for the gathered classics. Minden is the county seat for the area in which my family homesteaded after immigrating from Germany in the late 1800s, and it has a stately courthouse, a beautifully restored 1891 opera house and other interesting architecture. The gorgeous automobiles posed in front of the buildings just make them look that much better!
1936 Ford with the Kearney County Courthouse in the background. This picture doesn’t do justice to the deep burgundy paint job!
1949 Mercury with suicide doors (courthouse in the background).
1976 Bronco in front of the “Clearman” building.
1964 Chevelle camped out in front of the Opera House.
This 1936 Dodge four-door sedan was hands down my favorite entry. In ’36, the Dodge was powered by an 87-hp six-cylinder L-head and was touted as “The Beauty Winner of 1936.”
I have noticed many reproductions lately based upon the above hood ornament. The jet fighter ornament pictured is part of my own collection, and it is an original. The manufacturer was Univex and a patent was granted on the design of this hood ornament in 1948:
Mine has some other markings on the wing, and I was once told that the inventor, Lucian Ring, put his initials on the ornament in a similar fashion to pin-up artist George Petty whose name appears on the wing of the flying goddess hood ornament he designed for Nash. To be perfectly honest, however, I can clearly see the “L” but I’m not certain it is followed by an “R”.
I am also not too clear on who Lucian Ring was, exactly, I found a short obituary from 1957 that stated he had died at the too-young age of 55 . He lived in Detroit for most of his adult life and was a die cast engineer. There were a number of other patents related to die cast equipment granted to him in the 1940s and 1950s, but the jet fighter was the only hood ornament. It was an aftermarket ornament that could be purchased from vendors like the one in this 1949 advertisement for Economy Auto Stores:
It was advertised as fitting a 1946 Ford and could be purchased for the low, low, low price of $2.49:
An original, like mine, is marked with the manufacturer’s name, Univex, and the patent number 149,443.
A beautiful remnant from the dawn of the jet age, originals are currently selling for around $100 (but beware the reproductions)!
The excerpt below was taken from a 1923 story featuring an interview with Walter Chrysler before THE Chrysler, when he was with Maxwell. It has some interesting facts regarding the state of the American automobile industry in 1923. Notice the complete dominance by Henry Ford at that point in time:
I was driving past the Central Auto Electric building in Kearney the other day and just had to stop and snap a photo of this ’62 Chevy sitting out front and completing a striking tableau:
This building is just about my favorite in all of Kearney and, thankfully, it remains unmolested with ugly “updates”. It was built in 1946 by Bierman’s Auto Electric, and they moved into this building, their new location, the following year. The business handled GM parts, and this incredible double-sided United Motors Service sign still hangs out front.
Bierman’s didn’t just service GM products per this 1945 advertisement with an emphasis on Studebaker:
Bierman’s advertised their shop as the place to take your car if you wanted “action in your battery, pep in your plugs and power in your engine.” Who doesn’t want those things?
This Vietnam-era M-725 ambulance was manufactured by Kaiser Jeep and can be found at the Heartland Museum of Military Vehicles.This ambulance was powered by a 6-cylinder 230-ci engine and was capable of transporting 5-8 patients.
“We owe this freedom of choice and action to those men and women in uniform who have served this nation and its interests in time of need. In particular, we are forever indebted to those who have given their lives that we might be free.”
Using a vintage Chevrolet station wagon as a billboard is a genius piece of marketing. What could be a more effective method of getting the attention of the masses?
This particular wagon is advertising the Comstock Windmill Festival which is actually a music festival that takes place in the rolling hills of a Nebraska pasture, this year from June 10-12.
The ’54 Chevy wagon was powered by a 6-cylinder 235.5-ci “Blue-Flame” engine and was available as a One-Fifty or Two-Ten Handyman or the Bel Air Townsman:
Rural Nebraska is home to the friendly “finger wave” as well as amber waves of grain, but you’ll need to drive awhile to find the type of waves that will allow you to use that surf board. As we say in Nebraska, “Long time, no sea.”
My last post contained a description of the lavish 1917 St. Louis Auto Show, and one of the many cars on display at that event was a Ben-Hur. The Ben-Hur Motor Company had introduced its new automobile to the public at the 1916 Cleveland Auto Show the previous December, and, coinciding with the St. Louis show, it had just opened a showroom in that city at 3308 Lindell Boulevard.
The company had gone to great lengths to create a luxurious showroom experience. The walls were finished in cypress up to a balcony that ran all the way around the room. In the center stood a 700-year-old Italian fountain. The floor was imported hand-painted Welsh tile, and the light fixtures were also imported from France and Austria. There were silk draperies and even a restroom for ladies that included a telephone and a writing table. The real showstopper on display, however, was a chariot, patterned after the description used in the novel of the same name, “Ben-Hur”.
Obviously, the owners were hoping to capitalize on the popularity of the novel by General Lew Wallace and the Klaw and Erlanger stage production of that story. The national tour of that production ran for more than 20 years, beginning in 1899, and was seen by more than 20 million people. In order to properly portray the famous chariot race, the producers came up with an ingenious plan to show the contesting horses running at top speed before thousands of excited spectators. The chariots were each “pulled” by four horses, and each horse was provided with a separate treadmill, 27 inches wide, on which to run. The treadmills were chains of stout hickory slats, 4 inches wide and covered in rubber and canvas, resting on ball-bearing wheels. This all sat on a heavily braced sub-stage erected two and a half feet below the footlights. To add to the illusion of speed, a fan was concealed in the bow of each chariot to blow the clothing of the drivers and an intricate electrical device below each wheel threw dust into the air. Immense panoramas, 32-feet high and 2000 feet in length, were painted with cheering Romans and revolved from right to left on massive cylinders.
Not only was the chariot in the Ben-Hur showroom patterned after the one described in the novel, that chariot was one that had actually been used in the stage production. No expense was spared in the design of the showroom, and, using the tagline, “There is only one best way to do a thing, ” only the best products were chosen during the manufacturing of the Ben-Hur as well. These specifications appeared in a 1917 advertisement:
AXLES. Timken – front and rear.
CARBURETOR. Float feed automatic, with dash adjustment.
EQUIPMENT. Stewart-Warner Speedometer. Six months Warner electric clock, oil pressure gauge, ammeter, instrument lamp, transmission-driven tire pump, Moto-meter, extra wheel on carrier in rear, special ignition and lighting switch with theft-proof lock. Full set of tools, jack and tire repair outfit, spot light.
IGNITION. Bosch high tension magneto – manual advance.
GASOLINE SYSTEM. Stewart Warner vacuum feed.
LIGHTING AND STARTING. Westinghouse two-unit system.
TIRES. 35 X 4 ½” Miller (geared-to-the-road” on rear).
TRANSMISSION. Selective sliding gear, 3 speeds forward, and reverse.
TOP. Genuine Pantasote.
UPHOLSTERING. Genuine hand-buffed leather. Best long-drawn curled hair and resilient steel springs.
WEIGHT. 3100 pounds.
WHEELBASE. 126 inches.
WHEELS. 34” Goodrich special artillery type, or 34” Kelly wire wheels.
Prices ranged from $1875 for a 4-passenger roadster to $2750 for a 7-passenger touring sedan. Ben-Hur also placed an emphasis on service in their ads: “Uninterrupted day-in-and-day-out use of your car-regardless of who is to blame for accidents, breakages, etc. That is what we intend to give Ben-Hur owners” because “the owner is right.”
All of this luxury and service had a hefty price tag, and one the company was apparently unable to pay using a factory with a capacity of only twenty cars per day. The wheel fell off the company’s own financial chariot, so to speak, and it was in receivership by May of 1918.
***If you have any actual photos of a Ben-Hur automobile, please contact me at americancarhistorian@gmail.com***
What fun it must have been to attend those early automobile shows, so full of pomp and circumstance and a staggering variety of automobile brands. I recently discovered a story about the Tenth Annual St. Louis Automobile Show which took place in 1917 and encompassed six floors of the Overland Building at Locust and 23rd. The decorating scheme was plants, vines and flowers, with each floor having a different motif such as palm trees on one floor and peach blossoms on another. One night of the show fell on Washington’s birthday, so all of the exhibitors and their salesmen were appearing in full evening dress, American flags were added to the decorations, and an orchestra was present to play patriotic songs. It was estimated that 10,000 people dressed up and stepped out to attend the festivities. Can you picture it?
The first floor of the show was reserved for a truck display. Here is the list of cars that were displayed on the other five floors. How many do you recognize?
One brand that stood out to me was the Ben-Hur, possibly because my husband has watched the movie by the same name at least a hundred times. More on the Ben-Hur automobile next time!
