William E. Metzger

William Ernest Metzger (1868-1933) was an American automotive pioneer and salesman from Detroit. A bicycle dealer, he attended the first automobile show in London in 1895, returned convinced of the motor car and opened one of the first automobile dealerships in the United States, with a showroom selling Waverley electric cars from 1897. He helped organize the Detroit Auto Show in 1899 and the New York Auto Show in 1900, promoted the 1901 Detroit race in which Henry Ford beat Alexander Winton, and in 1902 was one of the organizers of the Cadillac Motor Car Company, serving as its sales manager until 1908. That year he joined Byron Everitt and Walter Flanders to form the E-M-F Company, whose name carries his initial, and he later founded Columbia Motors, took part in the Rickenbacker venture and, in the late 1920s, helped form the Stinson Aircraft Company and organized the Cadillac Aircraft Company. He died in 1933.