April 6: A wonderful Saturday afternoon . . .
Read MoreThe info displayed with the car says the previous owner found the car in Charlotte at a local used car dealer in 1957. By that time, the original flathead V12 had already been replaced with a 1950 Oldsmobile V8. He bought the car and only drove it locally before parking it in 1965. The odometer shows around 41k miles.
The Metropolitan was a very unusual car. Nash Motors was exploring the idea of producing a small economical commuter car, something that could be marketed as a "second car" for the family. The problem was that creating the tooling to manufacture an all-new design was extremely expensive. So in a strange twist, Nash looked to England where small cars were the norm. British car body manufacturer Fisher & Ludlow supplied the body. Mechanical components were sourced from Austin who also did the final assembly.
In other words, the Metropolitan was an American-designed car marketed exclusively in North America that was completely manufactured and assembled in England. Even so, it was fairly successful with almost 95,000 being sold. This car is 1 of 13,095 built in 1954.