The fellow who drove my Mercury in that demolition derby was named Terry. He lived in the same town as my grandparents and had been a frequent passenger on the J. C. Higgins bicycle with the pseudo-fins on the carrier. When we got a little older, I was a frequent passenger on the back of his Zundapp motorcycle and we were both frequent passengers in each other’s cars. In Terry’s case that was a 1952 Ford.
Through much of high school, Terry worked in a filling station pumping gas. He got paid a little money but we all know that the real reason was so he had a place to work on his car. Unlike me, Terry was meticulous. He rebuilt and repainted the flathead V8. He sanded and taped the car and worked out a deal to get it painted. He installed new seat covers and added seat belts; Not because they were required — they weren’t — but because they were cool and a good idea. He was pretty much at the end of his project list and had his sights on another car when the Mercury started worrying me a little. I don’t recall what it was that Terry replaced the Ford with but I replaced the Mercury with the Ford. This was the car I drove through my senior year and I think I may have sold it to the same guy I sold the Whizzer to. I’m not entirely sure of that but I do know it’s the car I loaned him when I went riding on the Whizzer the summer after graduation.
Imagine the car in this picture with dark blue paint and baby moon hub caps and you’ll have something close to what I was driving in the spring of 1965. Besides two doors, it had dual two-barrels on an Offenhauser manifold, dual points in a Mallory distributor, and dual exhausts. It wasn’t particularly fast by 1965 standards but its description sounded fast.
Previous Wheels: Chapter 4 — 1954 Mercury
Next Wheels: Chapter 6 — 1959 Chevrolet
That car’s styling is all business. It says, “I’m a car. I’m very serious about being a car, too.” If this car could go to the barber, it would ask for a flat top.
Well, it did have two flat heads.
Barber line is great and probably accurate.
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Hey, those are cool memories. Remember I sold you that car so I could buy my brother’s ’54 Merc. Later on when I was married and living in Ansonia I was working at New Idea in Coldwater. The auto tranny on the old Merc gave out,but I found a replacement where our mutual friend Mitch used to live. The house was unlived in by then,but out in the yard was the old ’52 Ford. I couldn’t find out who owned it so just took out the tranny which, if you remember, was manual with overdrive so I also purloined the clutch,steering column,pedals,etc.ad infinitum and spent many a weary night converting the whole thing. Worked OK except the differential gearing was a little high. Those old OD trannies used a 4.11 rear end and the autos were 3.65. Doesn’t sound like much difference until the light turns green! Besides, it was just a work car by then as I was proudly making payments on a ’60 Olds convertible at that time. By the way, have you seen the prices on old Whizzers lately?!!
What’s cool is getting the next chapter of the story. I had no idea that the old Ford had a second life as a parts donor. I was thinking I might have sold the car to Steve Miller but Mitch makes sense. Yeah, I think Whizzer prices surprise me more than old car prices because there wasn’t much to them to begin with.
Now that you mention it, I believe you did sell that car to Steve. I have no idea how it ended up at Mitch’s place. I only came across it by accident, don’t even know why I was on that road since it wasn’t on my normal beaten path. Maybe Steve sold it to Mitch.
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