Brett Johnson is very familiar these days with Bob Metz and his custom car legacy. Actually, Johnson has become a bit of an expert on Metz.
He just wishes that he had found out about Metz a little sooner. If he had known earlier about Metz’s accomplished but somewhat overlooked career as a fabricator, craftsman, visionary and radical custom car builder, Johnson would no doubt have taken a little different approach to restoring his 1950 Buick Super custom.
By the time the Indianapolis resident had learned about Metz and figured out that his Buick was one of Metz’s first big custom creations, he had already rebuilt the car to suit his own tastes. Now he figures the unique Buick is historically significant enough to warrant another makeover — one that would turn it back into the car Metz had intended it to be when he painstakingly pieced the car together in 1951 at the Monfort-Olinger Sales shop where he worked in Shelbyville, Ind. The almost-new Buick had been wrecked in a collision with a train. Four months later, the car was transformed from a mangled sedan into a one-off convertible with a chopped removable hardtop.
Metz showed the car at some local events for several years, including the Indianapolis Custom Car Show, but he had other cars to build and other challenges to tackle. The 1950 Buick Super — the first of two radical 1950 Buick Supers Metz built — eventually changed hands many times while Metz was busy making a name for himself with a number of high-profile hot rods and Hollywood movie cars.
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