A lot can happen in a day, especially when you stretch that day over the entire span of automobile production. We may look at the information overload we receive today as “all in a day’s work,” but if you go back in time, beyond the information superhighway, you’ll see that not only was the pace of life a little slower, but everything else was too!

Goin’ Metro

Unless it’s your birthday, April 9th may not stand out as particularly noteworthy. But there have been several times throughout history when this day made the headlines. Case in point would be the 1956 Nash Metropolitans being introduced on this day back in, you guessed it, 1956. They entered the U.S. market through Nash and Hudson dealerships.

Image: wikipedia.org

You may recall the two corporations (Nash-Kelvinator and Hudson Motor Car Company) had merged just two years prior, in what was the largest merger in U.S. history at that time. The two automakers formed the American Motors Corporation (AMC) and while Nash had been manufacturing the tiny, sub-compact car since 1953, the duo was betting on the new “Series III” version of the Metro to bring customers into both showrooms.

The very next year (1957) AMC announced that it would be dropping the Nash and Hudson nameplates and market the Metropolitan as its own brand, which would be sold through Rambler dealerships. Around this time, the Nash and Hudson-style grilles were dropped and replaced with the Metropolitan “M” logo. Production would continue for another five years, until the last Metropolitan rolled off the assembly line on April 19, 1961.

Edsel Opens Shop

April 9th is also the day the first Edsel dealership franchise agreements were signed— in 1957. The ill-fated brand was formed just less than one year prior, in November of 1956. Ford had just become a publicly-traded company no longer owned by the Ford family and the Edsel was intended to help bridge the gap between Ford and both GM and Chrysler.

What began as an attempt to increase the number of dealerships under the Ford Motor Company (10,000) eventually wound up as a perfect example of a corporate failure. Many of those Edsel dealer franchises would soon welcome Lincoln-Mercury into their showrooms to help increase traffic. Many dealerships closed and many Edsel designs were carried over to other brands. The 1960 Comet was reportedly intended to be under the Edsel moniker but did quite well as a Mercury. Perhaps Edsel WAS simply a car ahead of its time!

Bridging The Gap

Man has been building ships for thousands of years and the automobile is a relatively new idea when you compare the two. While they both have a goal of moving people and goods, there comes a distinct conflict when the two entities meet head-on. On this day in 1905, the residents of Duluth, Minnesota answered such a conundrum when they opened the Aerial Ferry Bridge over the Duluth Ship Channel.

Looking more like a carnival ride than a bridge structure, the original design utilized one gondola suspended 12 feet above the water’s surface and hung from the overhead track that spanned the waterway.  The gondola could hold approximately 60 tons worth of people, wagons and eventually, cars. The gondola could traverse the waterway in about a minute and a round-trip would take right around five minutes.

While a solution to the initial problem, eventually a better solution was designed and the bridge was revamped in 1929 to accommodate increased traffic. In an interesting twist, the design to upgrade the structure utilized a lifting platform that spanned its entire width, a design similar to the initial plan that was drawn up and accepted by the city of Duluth back in 1892 but was nixed by the war department.

The newly renovated bridge’s lifting span was first raised on March 29, 1930, and continues to do so to this day. The overhead span was raised from its original height to accommodate larger ships and counterweights were added to the side columns to help lift the structure, which can be done in about a minute.

The bridge now resides on the National Register of Historic Places and various webcams are used to allow watching ships as they pass. The bridge remains active, lifting on average 5,000 times a year and would make for a great desktop distraction if you find yourself with a bunch of time and no place to go.