Dr. Thomas Pruett, a retired optometrist from Lake Jackson Texas, donated a restored
1911 Metz Plan Car: 12hp air-cooled 2-cylinder roadster with friction transmission and double
chain drive. Dr. Pruett bought this car 5/6 years ago from a widow, whose husband had this 1911 and a 1915 Metz car.
Charles Herman Metz was a NY state Big Wheel Champion. He relocated to Massachusetts as a bicycle designer. He filed 22 patents on safety bicycles, improving their construction and lightening their weight. Metz established The Waltham Manufacturing Company in 1893 to manufacturer his own bicycles, the Orient. The company was located off Rumford Ave in Waltham. Metz left the company in 1901 over disagreements with his investors. He then started producing motorcycles under his own name, eventually going into business with the Marsh brothers of Brockton together producing the Marsh-Metz Motorcycle. In 1908 the Waltham Manufacturing Company, which manufactured the Orient buckboards and the Waltham-Orient cars, was in financial trouble. Charles Moulton, the President of the Waltham National Bank, which held the note, persuaded Charles Metz to return to the company to try and bring it out of bankruptcy. He reorganized the Waltham Manufacturing Company as the Metz Company in He inventoried the parts that were there and came up with a plan. He would divide the parts into 14 crates and sell each crate on an installment plan for $27 each which would be put together at home with the plans and tools supplied, for a total price of $378. Metz Plan buyers would save $222 on a $600 car. The first Metz car was a light 12hp air-cooled 2-cylinder roadster with friction transmission and double chain drive. The plan worked and by 1911, Metz started offering fully built factory cars built in the old sawtooth building on Seyon Street, now where BJs is located.
