- Ford brought out the “Mercury 8” in 1939
- The one-millionth car was built by 1950
- The Cougar selected as "Car of the Year” for 1967
The growing mid-price market
For the 1939 model year, the Ford Motor Company brought out a new car, the Mercury, a higher-priced entry that was marketed as the “Mercury 8” to help highlight its more powerful V8 engine. The reason for the premium-priced car was to counter the competitors from General Motors, Pontiac and Oldsmobile, as well as Chrysler Corporation's Dodge and DeSoto, in the growing mid-price market. Also, there was about a $400.00 spread between a Ford Deluxe and a Lincoln Zephyr, so the creation of the Mercury also filled that pricing gap.
While there was no question to any buyer as to the lineage of these new and more expensive siblings to the Ford Deluxe line, the Mercury cars did have these distinct differences as compared to the lower-cost Fords: a larger, different side styling to the reshaping of the front fenders to compensate for the extra length of the car, a unique front grille that incorporated horizontal bars rather than the vertical ones on the Ford Deluxe, plus a slightly more plush interior.
Henry Ford’s son Edsel was the brainchild of the Mercury Division, and it was needed as a way to combat lost sales of Ford customers that were moving up to more expensive automobiles.
The all-new post-war Mercury, came on April 29, 1948, as an early introduction for the 1949 model year. and a total of 301,319 cars were produced. (A new small Ford never made production in the US, rather it became the French “Vedette” car that debuted in 1948, and it looked like a miniature version of the car that became the ’49 Merc.)
The model “9CM-79” was the most expensive Mercury offered in 1949, with a 6-passenger 2-door station wagon, rather than the 4-door as in the past, at a cost of $2716.00 before any options such as whitewall tires, heater, radio, and Touch-O-Matic overdrive were added. The handsome woody wagons featured sliding rear windows and with more steel construction and less wood content as previous version. Only 8,044 of these beautiful station wagons were produced that year.
By 1950, the one millionth Mercury car was built, and to help deal with the increased sales volume; a new factory was built in Wayne, Michigan.
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Styled to give them unique appearances
Throughout the 1950s, many different models of the Mercury were introduced, they were no longer just known as the “Mercury 8” but now had specific model identifications including: Custom, Monterey, Montclair, and Medalist. In the balance of the 1950s, Mercury cars continued to feature longer wheelbases and larger engines as compared to the Ford models each year, and were styled to give them unique appearances.
Playing a rebellious teenager, James Dean in the 1955 movie “Rebel Without a Cause” brought a lot of attention to the 1949-51 style Mercs to the masses as well.
While new ball-joint front suspension was added and a more potent 161-hp engine, there were also new wrap-a-round taillights as part of the restyling of the rear of the car. But the real big splash out of Mercury that year was the release of the “Sun Valley.” Featuring a tinted Plexiglas roof section designed to give occupants a sensation of driving a convertible, but without the wind noise, the see-through top was an extra cost option of $130.00, over a traditional hardtop Monterey. Because of increased interior heat in direct sunlight, these “dream car tops” didn’t catch on with the buying public and were gone after two model years of availability.
With the more powerful engines that were fitted in the 1940s and early 1950s, around this time frame they also became an important factor in hot-rodding circles. The history books cite a Sunday morning in April of 1949 at a landing field in Goleta, California, as being perhaps the first organized (and legal) drag race to take place. This is the place where two then high-profile racecars, belonging to Tom Cobbs and Francisco “Fran” Hernandez, were paired up for a special grudge race.
On this “Day that Drag Racing Began,” the Mercury-powered car of Fran Hernandez won, a fender less Ford Deuce coupe, and for years hot rodders talked about this famed historical event, and it became a legend of sorts for drag racing historians. Hernandez would later go on to be involved in organized motorsports in years to come.
1957 saw the release of a completely new line of Mercurys, and for the first time in company history, the cars had their own exclusive bodies and were not based on Lincolns or Fords. This year the theme was “Dream-Car Design” with what they called the “shape of the future.”
The top-of-the-line model was the Turnpike Cruiser, and among the special features was a Skylight Dual-Curve Windshield, Breezeway Ventilation featuring front roof vents with a sliding back window, unique instrumentation, keyboard controlled push button Merc-O-Matic automatic transmission and Seat-O-Matic, power seats with memory, were part of the gadgetry that made it so memorable. While it all seems like a perfectly good idea at the time, the Turnpike Cruiser was an extreme example of “over the top” styling that was all too common in the late 1950s around Detroit.
The Mercury Division had become well known as a medium-priced big car with built-in quality, but their dealers also wanted in on having a small compact vehicle to offer their customer base. Coming late in 1960, all-new Mercury Comet compact models debuted in March of that year, and the smaller car took a page out the Mercury playbook from the past by incorporating an increasing wheelbase length, 4.5-inches longer than the Falcon, plus it featured different styling: grille that resembled that of the larger Mercury and rear fins with slanting taillights, something the plain-Jane Falcon did not have.
The cost of the Comet started at $2053.00, some 141 more dollars than the Ford Falcon. Comet marked the first time in Mercury history that a six-cylinder engine was fitted between the frame rails in a car to bear that name, in this case a 144-cid six-banger shared with the Ford Falcon compact.
1965 saw the big Mercury line get a new look and they grew in size with an exclusive 123-inch wheelbase. New that year was a perimeter-type frame and coil spring rear suspension. Shown here is the Park Lane convertible that had a base price of $3526.00 and tipped the scales at 4,013 pounds.
In 1967, Mercury decided to get involved in the pony car market segment, and came up with a somewhat luxurious version called the Cougar. Based on the Mustang platform, with 3 inches added to the wheelbase and different sheet metal and overall longer body by some 6.7-inches. Up front, the suspension was given an articulated strut addition allowing more wheel recession on bump impact and on the rear, the leaf springs were six inches longer than the Mustang springs.
The Cougar had more interior space than the Mustang and over 123 pounds of sound-deadening material was added to each one to provide optimum ride quality, and Cougars weighed some 400 pounds more than a V8-equipped Mustang. Cougar was voted Motor Trend Magazine’s coveted “Car of the Year” award in 1967 and some 150,893 examples were sold that first year.
A big 2-door hardtop came in 1969, complete with 219 inches of length. Featuring a flying buttress roof design, reverse side scoops on the quarter panels, fender skirts, distinctive rear taillight treatment, dramatic two-tone paint, flat-black was used on the rear deck area, plus bucket seat leather interior, the 1969 Marauder X-100 was a swanky full-sized machine that matched a muscular engine with 429-cid with 360 hp and with macho styling. It only lasted two model years.
A completely redesigned body came in 1970 for the mid-sized Montego/Cyclone, featuring fresh sheet metal that included a massive protruding snout on the front that gave the machine a look all its own. Pictured is a Cyclone with Super CJ (Cobra Jet) 429 power, somewhat of a sleeper, but for an additional $500.00 there was a “Spoiler” upgrade that included front and rear spoilers, scooped hood, side stripes, competition handling package and full instrumentation.
When Ford came out with their Maverick compact in April of 1969, sales were so strong that it prompted Mercury to follow suit with a version of their own for the 1971 model year, reviving the name Comet. This ad is for the GT trim version; all Comets featured a unique front-end treatment that mimicked the medium-sized Montego models along with Montego taillights. The 302 V8 power was optional.
From that point on, with few exceptions, cars that were sold as Mercurys were truly fancied-up Fords. Comet for 1971 was in reality a Ford Maverick with minimal styling changes on the front grille and rear taillights, and no effort whatsoever to give the rest of the car a look of its own. A Comet looked like a Maverick, and after 1975, Mercury took the same recipe and created the “Bobcat” from a Pinto, again with different grille, different taillights. The trend had started, and from that point on, the line of Mercury cars became less and less visually different from a Ford. People still bought them, with overall division sales regularly exceeding 400,000 units per year through the 1980s and 1990s however, after a long period of time had passed, buyers apparently started to realize that they were simply dress-up Fords and nothing special.
Of course, there were a few Mercury vehicles that came along after the mid-1970s that really did have more to them than just Mercury badges instead of the Blue Oval. In 1979, there was a new domestically-built Capri released, derived from the Mustang, but fitted with a different front end, styled with front fender and rear quarter panel bulges, with restyling of the taillights. It was not a different car from the Mustang, but at least some effort was given by the Mercury designers to give it some distinction from the Ford version. The notchback Cougar then came in 1983, and was an example of more effort from Mercury to give their cars a specific appearance.
Later in 1999, Mercury took a chance on another redesign of the new car, also called Cougar, only this time it was a front-wheel-drive machine with a “new edge” styling philosophy, created to try and generate sales away from Japanese “sport coupe” models. This 8th-generation Cougar was a stand-alone vehicle, not a cloned Ford, and while it may not have been the best-looking car to ever roll out of a showroom, at least Mercury made an attempt to make it unique and different.
A trendy hatchback sports-coupe with FWD and a standard 4-cylinder engine a DOHC, 24-valve V-6 was optional. The car was created to compete with imports of this sized vehicle category and the body was shaped with sharp angles and what best could be described as random lines. Mercury dealers were used to selling cars to middle-aged and older buyers, making their sales abilities with the intended young buyers for this new-breed of Cougar quite challenging.
In 2003 there was a slight glimmer of hope remaining for Mercury, as they released a performance-themed “Marauder” vehicle, a sport version of the Grand Marquis, somewhat of a modern muscle sedan with a 302-hp special engine and tuned suspension. While it shared the same body as the Ford Crown Victoria, there were numerous features of the car that made it a special car. But with poor sales, it may have been a situation of “too little, too late” for the car. People had long forgotten that the Mercury marque meant more power over a Ford.
However, when looking back at the 72-year history of the unique and powerful Mercurys that were offered, mainly those from 1939 until the 1970s, it is with mixed feelings to see the Mercury brand die off, especially after all those years the division built powerful and good-looking vehicles at reasonable prices, and most importantly, with distinguishable looks.
