Inliners International Forums General Discussion AMC/JEEP Nash Metropoilitan Anyone?

Local 2nd class used car lot has a white over yellow Nash Metropolitan for sale. $2700. From 20ft it needs body work.Don't know about motor.If anyone is interested I'll get a phone #.

Drew,

I put a flathead V8 Ford engine in a metro, back in '58.........Ruined it! I think we threw the good-running original engine in the dump! They had a very nice little BMC four-banger in 'em. Tough as nails. A 4, or 5-speed tranny would have really livened a Metro up, but they only had 3-speed transmissions, if i remember right.

They were unibody, prone to rust, tho......

We used to think of them as kind of a "girly" car.

I'm going to look at a '53 Jeep pickup tomorrow.

This "cool" girl in High School (1959) had one.

Four of us used to pick it up & place it in between two palm trees as a joke.

Happy trails.

Well, somebody wanted it. Sold over the weekend I guess,'cause it's gone.

There are a couple of metropolitans that show up every year at GoodGuys Columbus with healthy small block chevys in them. They don't appear to be "girly cars"

When I lived in Kentucky, there was a Purple 455 Buick powered metro, called Plum Crazy, that was a drag-race only car. It was ferocious and like you said, Bill, it definitely was NOT a Girly car!

Drew, what do you think about a little flathead Studebaker six in a Crosley wagon? A buddy has a 168ci Champion engine and transmission with dual carbs and headers. With a narrowed 8" Ford rear end, it oughta be something different! He said if I'll weld him up a car trailer, he'll give it to me.

I'm presently dickering with a guy with a nice Crosley wagon.

Well, that actually might work. I rode around alot with a cousin in his Crosley wagon where we removed the back seat,placed the fronts further back and cut thru the firewall for flathead 4 cyl. Ford + trans of some vintage.The suspension is what I don't remember.Not sure what we did to beef up the front end, but I expect not much. We were so cheap we used a hook and eye to keep the hood down.

That 'very nice little BMC four banger' they came with didn't have a good reputation here!

It was the Austin A40 engine, about 1250cc I think. Number 3 big end bearing was very suss, and the stinking things always jumped out of third gear (they were a 4-speed) when they weren't too bad, jumped out of first and second as well if they got tired.

If I was going to smarten one up, I'd go for a Nissan/Datsun L16 or similar engine with the accompanying 5-speed.

I'm sure you had more of 'em running around down there, Ray. I had a friend with a little '50s era Austin 2dr sedan, that he drove for over 20 years. Of course, that may have been one of a million! He might have never stopped driving it, but was "T-Boned" by a pickup. (Luckily, only got a scratch, himself) My impression was the engines were tough as nails. Isn't that the same engine family as the mini cars used?

I agree about the Datsun engines, too. In fact, I have a 1200 Datsun push-rod engine sitting my garage, while I try to figure out what to put it in. It was rebuilt after nearly 200,000 miles! A .010 overbore cleaned up the cylinders and the crank miked out perfect!

to be honest, if i were gonna freshen one up, i would go with either a GM 2.2 4 banger, (stay away from the 2.5L, while there ok engines, there not that tough, HOT ROD wrote up a very nice article on them in 86, but unless you are using the "pontiac super duty" block, crank, rods, etc, i would stay away from it. the 2.2 is a MUCH better engine, and WAY more available.

another good choice/option is the 2.3 ford engine family (2.0,2.3,2.5) depending on how high/low tech you want to go.

for the record the 2.2 makes about 120HP/ 143ft/lbs factory, and the 2.5 makes AROUND the same.

btw, back both of the above with a B/W T-5.

A real easy upgrade is 1275 BMC engine (Sprite, Midget etc) with a Nissan 5-speed behind it. The engine is a direct drop in and there is a kit to mate the 5-speed.

While we had plenty of A40s, we didn't get the Metropolitan here. Those engines, which were a larger engine than the Mini used and smaller than the BMC B-series (A55, MG A etc) never had a good reputation for durability.

That Datsun 1200 pushrod is a generation on from the engine that Nissan made out of their licence to go on with the A40 engine. It became a good thing with Japanese engineering, and the smaller 1200 engine had a number of further advances.

Many Morris Minors here run around with Datsun 1200 engines and gearboxes.

I hope, by the way, you're not confusing the A40 with the A30, which was the first car to use the smaller A-series engine, again, the one used in Minis and Spridgets.

A couple or three years ago there was a guy who showed up at the Northwest Motorfest in Boise with an original-looking Metropolitan that had a Datsun 1600 L-16 motor and trans in it. Made a very neat setup, and I'm sure it ran better than the orginal motor and trans. It was my favorite car in the show that year.

When I was in high school, we called the Metros "Lois Lane cars" because the actress who played Lois Lane in the old Superman tv show of the 1950's drove one in the show. Noelle Neill was her name if I remember correctly. Anyway, they were sort of cute little buggers in the same way a mongrel dog is cute sometimes. They were absolutely gutless and handled like a drunken pig, but they did get good gas mileage. With 25 to 30 cent a gallon gasoline, you could literally run the things on pocket change in those days.