![\"1952](\"https:\/\/dennygibson.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/ford52_ad.jpg\")
<\/a>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.<\/p>\nThrough 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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Previous Wheels: Chapter 4 — 1954 Mercury<\/a> 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. … Continue reading
\nNext Wheels: Chapter 6 — 1959 Chevrolet<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"