The thought of receiving prestigious honors and winning awards while sitting next to Ferraris and cars with more than $200,000 in restorations and upgrades, makes Ted Whipple chuckle.
He often refers to his 1954 Hudson Metropolitan as the “Rubber Chicken of Cars,” because in his mind it’s not supposed to win awards (at least the big awards). Instead it’s supposed to make people smile.
“That’s why I say it’s the rubber chicken of cars; if you can’t smile driving a Metro you got the wrong car,” Ted told My Classic Garage.
Regardless of the smiles it creates, it’s still winning some pretty big honors.
In fact, he can’t believe all the attention his 1954 Hudson Metropolitan has received at car shows and from national magazines. It’s not just the awards and honors he’s receiving at these events, but also the crowds, sometime several rows deep, surrounding the car.
“I almost have to apologize to people sitting next to us in another type of car at a car show or show ‘n shine because they get butt prints on their cars from people backing up to look at the car,” said Ted, who found and bought the car off eBay in 2014.
While at the 2017 Hot August Nights in Reno, Nev., back in August, Ted entered his ’54 Hudson Metropolitan in a Show ‘n Shine when the impossible happened — at least in his mind.
He was standing with his car when a guy approached him to ask if he could put a sticker that read “Top 100 in the Nation” on the window. The guy was from “Street Rodder” magazine and wanted to recognize his Hudson Metropolitan as one of the top 100 street rods in the nation for 2017.
Ted assumed one of his friends had convinced some poor guy to prank him; therefore, Ted didn’t believe the guy and made him show him his business card to prove who he was and who he worked for.
“The guy said, ‘No, it’s real,’ and he handed me a form to fill out about the disclaimer and what the car was and release the pictures,” Ted said. “He did a photo shoot and video right there.”
The staff at “Street Rodder” magazine go around to 10 different events throughout the year and identify the Top 10 cars at each event, which make up the Top 100.
Out of roughly 6,000 cars at Reno’s Hot August Nights, Ted’s 1954 Hudson Metropolitan was selected as one of the top 10 cars by “Street Rodder” to appear in their Top 100 of 2017 list.
“They go to a lot of different places and you’ll find my car along with nine beautiful cars on their website,” Ted stated. “You can find it under ‘Street Rodder Magazine Top 100 Hot August Nights.’”
In addition to the car’s inclusion on the prestigious list, Ted also received a jacket and a subscription to “Street Rodder” magazine.
At the 2017 Hot August Nights, the ’54 Hudson Metropolitan was also named one of the top five cars on Tuesday. That day the category was for “Other Manufacturers,” such as Nash, AMC and Studebaker. On a different night that week, the car was named one of 20 finalists at the Atlantis Casino.
It was at the latter event where Ted found himself parked next to a car in which the owner had poured more than $240,000 and had even more grandiose plans for a car in 2018.
Ted’s 1954 Hudson Metropolitan also received the N2M2 Award (i.e., the Northern Nevada Motor Madness Award) this year, its inaugural year. The awards committee selects the Top 50 cars shown during the show car season throughout the Reno area. They pick a car at each car show and then at the end of the year those 50 cars are invited to compete for the overall award.
“I always go to this one local car show and the judges would just walk by my little Metro,” said Ted. “A couple weeks ago, one of the judges started looking at my car from a distance and saw the sticker [from “Street Rodder”]. I told him I won Top 100 in the Nation for my car. So, he came over and started looking more closely at the car and gave me the award.”
Before Ted could entertain the idea of entering his Metropolitan into car shows, there was considerable work that had to be done on it.
For starters, the paint was falling off in large chunks. From there, it didn’t get much better.
Ted brought the car home and started taking it apart and soon realized the floor was also bad. The floor was covered with fiberglass, but the actual floors were rusted out. Metropolitan convertibles, like Ted’s, had rubber floor mats and when they got rained on the water collected underneath the mats and ate away at the metal.
Since fiberglass isn’t that strong, Ted decided to cut and ground the fiberglass out and put new floors in. Then he realized that when you added weight in the car (e.g., a couple of people) the doors couldn’t close.
“We reinforced a couple bars across the top of the car, put the car on a rotisserie, reinforced the frame rails with four-inch metal that was about 40 inches long,” said Ted, who is currently building his wife a pink and white 1959 Nash Metropolitan as a tribute to breast cancer survivors. “We sandwiched the old frame rails and made a new frame and then we cut the doors to match the car.
“Once we got the car squared, we cut the doors and re-welded the doors to get the nice gap that we have now. That’s what it needed.”
To improve the Metropolitan’s performance, one of the first things Ted did was replace the stock engine that produced only 50 hp with a 1985 Mustang 2.3 4-cylinder engine that knocked its output all the way up to 130 hp. He also replaced the camshaft since the one it had was starting to go flat.
The front and rear suspension are both taken from a MG Midget since it’s the same size as the stock Metropolitan rear-end, but it has a higher gear ratio and better (disc) brakes.
In the early 1950s, as people returned from war they started moving to the cities or “metropolitan” areas and needed a car that was reliable and well-suited for city life. George Mason, of Nash Motors, wanted a car that was environmentally friendly and easy to drive and park; therefore, making it easy to get around cities. Because of this, the small car was heavily marketed toward women.
According to the Metropolitan Restoration Service’s website dedicated to the history of the Metropolitan, “The Metropolitan was designed in the USA by William J. Flajole, for Nash Motor Division of Nash-Kelvinator Corporation. Fisher & Ludlow, Ltd., built the body and the mechanical outfitting was done by Austin Motor Company, Ltd. Both companies were in Birmingham, England.”
Rising labor costs in the U.S. and the lack of tooling small enough to handle production of the Metropolitan made it necessary for the Nash-Kelvinator Corporation to find a production partner overseas.
The cars were originally produced by Austin Motors with Austin 1200cc engines and a three-speed transmission. The first production run of the small car was released in March 1954 as Hudson Metropolitans. A couple months later, in May, Hudson and Nash merged to form American Motors.
“They decided to make the Metropolitan a Nash Metropolitan instead of a Hudson,” said Ted. “When people see the Hudson badge on my Metropolitan they often say, ‘didn’t know Hudson made one.’
“Well, Hudson didn’t make one and Nash didn’t make one either. They were made by Austin, but they were badged for that particular dealer.”
The Metropolitans were built for nine years, until 1963, importing more than 90,000 to the U.S.
Regardless of the car’s history, whether it’s carrying a Hudson or Nash badge or how fans and judges receive it at events and on the road, Ted’s 1954 Hudson Metropolitan will always be the rubber chicken of cars to him.
And that makes him smile.
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