Ken Mertes’ family might well be the only one in existence who still has a Sears Motor Buggy runabout that they bought straight from the factory.
And Mertes figures he is probably the only guy on the planet that it should be entrusted to. After all, the oldest memories he has in life involve the car. His grandfather, John Mertes, bought the Motor Buggy new 107 years ago. Ken’s father, John “Clem” Mertes, kept it running and spent countless thousands of hours with the car and made it his pride and joy. And more than anything, Mertes simply couldn’t bear the thought of anybody else owning the Sears that has truly become a family treasure.
“My earliest memories of the car are my earliest memories in life,” chuckles the resident of Onawa, Iowa (pop. 2,937). “We were just kids, my brother was a year older than me, and we would stand in the back there, where there’s just room enough to haul something, and we’d putz around town. That would have been in the early 1950s, and the car was a novelty even then.”
Mertes is a very proud third owner of the wonderful old high-wheeler. He’s had it longer than his grandfather, but not nearly as long as his dad, who staked his claim to the car even before he was of legal driving age.
“My dad always said that his dad bought it before my dad was born … Dad was born in 1913. His dad had it and then he ended up getting another vehicle and my dad always said that his dad told him that last time he drove it was time when his wife was pregnant with my dad,” Mertes recounts. “They lived out on a farm and Grandpa was going to help somebody else do some farm work so he drove the old car and left the good car with her in case they needed to go to the hospital. That was the last time he ever drove it … Then when Dad got to be a teenager, he asked Grandpa if he could drive it, and Grandpa said if you can get it running you can play with it. So dad and his brother Jim messed around with it and got it running.
“Dad always said ‘Jim and I drove the devil out of it!’ … But then the timer — basically what we would think of now as a distributor cap — went bad and that was the end of it. They had to park it.”
Clem officially bought the Sears from his father in 1929 when John was forced to sell the family farm. “Dad asked if he could have the old car and Grandpa said you might as well take it or it’s going to go for scrap,” Mertes recalled. The Sears then spent a few years in storage in a relative’s garage after Clem was drafted and spent time overseas doing his military service.
“When he got back from Europe and got married and got squared away a little bit, he had somebody help him figure out the timer. He got it going and it’s been going ever since,” Mertes says.
Aside from some engine work and a second set of hard-rubber tires, the amazing Motor Buggy runabout is almost entirely original. Ken can’t even hazard a guess as to how many miles the Sears has driven in its lifetime, but for being an unrestored survivor it remains in remarkable condition.
“It lost a wrist pin way back when Dad and his brother were using it, and that cylinder scorched so bad it didn’t even work,” Mertes said. “We finally found a machinist who would fix it and we tore it all the way down and pulled the engine out and had it bored and sleeved and got it running like a sewing machine. I want to say that was probably the mid-‘90s …
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