An Unlikely Indy Car

            Charles Barngrover recently got the opportunity to run his classic car around the famed brickyard at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Without a doubt that would be a thrill for anyone but for Charles it was a little extra special. You see, Charles doesn’t own a Vette or a Ferrari or a Jaguar. No, he owns a 1961 Nash Metropolitan.

            Four years ago Charles bought the car off of EBay. “I guess a grandfather had passed and his kids didn’t know what to do with it,” he explained.

            He hadn’t gone out specifically looking for a Metropolitan or even a Nash but he knew that he wanted something a little out of the norm. “There are so many ’57 Chevys and Mustangs out there. This was different,” he said.

            Nash first rolled out the Metropolitan in 1954 as a low cost, reliable compact car. Subsequently, Nash merged with Hudson to for American Motors which allowed the car to be sole under the Hudson banner as well.

            While the 1950s and 60s was the heyday of monuments to massive steel cars, the Metropolitan was different. It was a small car that was less than 150 inches long and weighed only 1850 pounds. Manufactured in England it sported a 1200 cc or 1500 cc engine that didn’t produce a lot of power but gave the owner a solid 35 to 40 miles per gallon. The last of the Metropolitans rolled out in 1962.

            “I don’t know what the gene is that makes people like old cars,” he said but admitted that he has it in his own DNA.

            Charles never owned a Metropolitan or a Nash for that matter but he did have some early connections. “Back in the 50s my family had a Rambler,” he said of another AMC classic, one that was instrumental in taking market share away from the Metropolitan. His very first car was something of a harbinger of this car. “My very first car was a 1957 Beetle.”

            A retired Associate Dead of Business at the University of Cincinnati, Charles found that his Metropolitan was in pretty good shape when he first bought it. “I re-painted it and cleaned it up a little,” he said. It is in beautiful shape and he wants to keep it that way.

            Mostly Charles just drives the car to shows and around on single errands. “You get nervous leaving it in a parking lot. It’s so easy for it to get dinged up,” he said, stating a fear of all classic car owners. Still, he does enjoy brining it out to shows for people to see.

            “People are always coming up and telling me stories about when they had one or there was one in their family,” he added. “That’s the fun part about shows for me. I get to meet a lot of folks.”

            Because his car is in such impeccable shape and is such a rarity as well, he was recently invited to a big car show hosted by the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

            “One of the perks of being invited to that show is you get to drive around the track,” Charles explained with a smile. So he and his 1961 Nash Metropolitan got to run where so many legends have driven.

            Jokingly he said that the top speed of his car is the speed limit. But still, he got to do something that most car enthusiasts only dream of doing, driving around that brickyard track.