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Nash Metropolitan
A Brief History
While most U.S. automobile makers were following a "bigger-is-better" philosophy, Nash Motor Company executives were examining the market to offer American buyers an economical transportation alternative. The Metropolitan was designed in the United States and it patterned a concept car, the NXI (Nash Experimental International). This prototype was displayed at a number of "surviews" (survey/previews) to gauge the reaction of the American motoring public to a car of this size. The result of these surviews convinced Nash that there was indeed a market for such a car, if it could be built at a competitive price. This meant that it would not be viable to build such a car from scratch in the U.S. because the tooling costs would have been prohibitive. The only cost-effective option was to build overseas using existing mechanical components, leaving only the tooling cost for body panels and other unique components.
With this in mind, Nash negotiated with several European companies, until settling on Austin in England (by then part of BMC). The bodywork was produced by Fisher & Ludlow (also a UK company), and the mechanicals as well as final assembly undertaken by the Austin Motor Company. This was the first time an American-designed car had been entirely built in Europe.
Production at Austin's Longbridge factory started in October 1953. Nick-named the "baby Nash", the cars were tiny. They had 2159 mm wheelbase, overall length of 3797 mm and a gross weight of only 818 kg; thus making the Metropolitan smaller than the Volkswagen Beetle. The two models, a convertible and a hardtop, were powered by the OHV 1.2 L straight-4 Austin A-Series engine driving the rear wheels through a 3-speed manual transmission.
The new model was initially to be called the "NKI Custom", but the name was changed to "Metropolitan" just two months before its public release in March 1954. After the first 10,000 cars were built, the engine was changed to a B-Series, but still of 1200 cc.
A major redesign in 1956 saw the Metropolitan's B-Series engine increased in capacity to 1500 cc. Chrome strips on the body sides allowed a new two-tone finish to be incorporated. The grille was also redesigned, and the hood had its non-functional hoodscoop removed.
Another major revision in 1959 saw the addition of an external trunklid (previous models only allowed access to the trunk through the rear seat back) and vent windows. By this time, the engine had been up-graded by increasing the compression ratio from 7.2:1 to 8.3:1 giving an output of 55 bhp.
Production ceased in April 1961. Sufficient inventory existed for continuation of sales until March 1962. A total of approximately 95,000 Metropolitans were sold in the U.S.A. Although not a comparatively large number, the Metropolitan was one of the top selling imported cars in the U.S. market in their time. The top sales year was for the Metropolitan was 1959, helping to spur on the introduction of the Big Three's (GM, Ford, and Chrysler) new compact models.
From April 1957 onwards, approximately 9,400 additional units were sold in United Kingdom and other overseas markets. In the UK it was sold through Austin dealers as the "Metropolitan". Although the car carried Austin chassis plates, it did not have any external Austin badging. The Metropolitan's styling was noticeably American and it was considered outlandish when compared to the more sober British-styled models found in the British Motor Corporation stable.
source: wikipedia.org
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Originally Posted by smxi
