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AFTERNOON light played tricks on my elderly eyes as I strolled through the late summer fair. As part of a car show in a nearby small village, I saw a really nice ‘49 Mercury. The beauty sat in some partial shade created by the sun's rays filtering through the trees. However, the car's subtle paint tones wandered according to the changing light flickering beneath the leaves. This caused me to have some trouble discerning the color’s hues. As a pastor, I thought at first it was like an Advent season’s violet candle. Another view made me think of possibly a Lenten purple clergy stole. No matter the color, however… I simply found that the car was indeed beautifully done. Styled quite a bit from the factory original, the two-door sedan's top was chopped. Its ride height was also lowered so that the car hugged the ground. I thought the height was just about perfect… low enough to look good… but high enough to drive in polite circles. The custom Mercury was very, very clean. De-chromed nicely, the body dated its builder as a early-‘50s aficionado. Dual Appleton spot lights, dual exhausts, and quad bullet tail-lights told boldly its emphatic message. The car was an unapologetic ‘50s Saturday night cruiser. |
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Chopped & Lowered |
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Knowing a stock Mercury flathead V-8 had originally spun beneath the nosed hood, I mused somewhat about the prospects of its being high performance. Quite Trinitarian in my Christian theology… I wondered at the three Stromberg, 2-barrel carburetors perched on top of the original 95 horsepower flathead V-8 engine. Being occasionally radical of mind, however, I also daydreamed somewhat that just maybe… maybe… there would have been an original Arkus-Mercury engine hidden in there. Serving up much power back in the day, that engine design was originally fomented by Zora Arkus Duntov as an overhead-valve-conversion (OHV) for flathead V-8 Ford engines. Designed mostly for marine use at first, that engine conversion found its way into more than a few custom cars. Rather an afterthought, Mercury began as a registered trademark of the Ford Motor Company, launched in 1938 by Edsel Ford, the son of Henry Ford. |
