With all of the recent posts of my collectibles, my flowers and my personal family reminiscences, I'm posting this page from a 1969 Mercury brochure just because I like it, lol. As far as I can remember, it's not even my brochure. I found this image on my hard drive a while ago, during another project: cleaning and organizing my two external hard drives. I don't remember scanning this image, and I'm not even sure I have a '69 Mercury brochure, so I'm pretty sure I found this image online. There was a website called the Old Car Brochure Project, or something like that, but their server crashed a while ago and they don't have much back online yet for me to check my source.
Anyway, this red and black Mercury Marauder X-100 was one of the coolest cars of the swinging sixties, at least in styling. While sharing a platform and a roof/greenhouse with the full sized Fords of that year, the Marauder comes off totally different than its FoMoCo cousin. The rear fender skirts may seem a bit out of place, considering this was a "sporty" series, but it's totally appropriate for a car in the upper-middle priced range, like Buicks and Oldsmobiles. The matte black rear trunklid and flying buttress surround was avant garde for a domestic luxury car. I even dig the almost-fifties style chrome faux vent just behind the doors. The black and chrome Magnum 500 road wheels really look great in this application. Then you get to the diamond-pleated, button-tufted interior, and its true luxury car roots make themselves known.
I would like two mint examples please, one to drive and one to just look at and keep in perfect condition!
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION :
• Here's a link to a CarDomain page with some good photos of the X-100, inside and out. The black bucket seat interior illustrated is so inviting!
• Loyal reader of this blog, PhantomX sent me these photos of a 1/43 scale Marauder in the same red/black as the brochure. This is an amazingly accurate scale model, the proportions are just about perfect.
Good morning all,
ReplyDeleteI'm just checking out a few favorite blogs before I pack up the laptop and head to San Francisco for a week. I hope to be able to keep up with everyone while I'm away.
Casey,
Before the picture loaded, as soon as I saw "69 Mercury" I knew which picture you would be posting. The Marauder is one of Mercurys high points. The two-toning and the fender skirts are superb! The 67 Cougar and then this -- amazing! Mercury was really on a roll.
I didn't know the Old Car Brochure site had crashed. I guess I haven't tried to look at it for a while. It was a fun way to spend an afternoon!
Paul, NYC
One of my favorite Mercury's. Ford chose to include this car in their Ford 100 collection in 1/43 scale - celebrating their 100th anniversary. I suspect you'll be able to find a picture of it somewhere ;)
ReplyDeleteThe site you were referring to is called the Old Car Manual Project (www.oldcarbrochures.com) and they DO have the full size Mercury brochure posted - pages 16-17.
Thanks for a great post!
I'M SURE THAT CAR HAS MANY MEMORIES.ALOT OF ROCK AND ROLLING. I LOVE THE DESIGN. THE LARGER CARS HAVE SO MUCH MORE TO OFFER THAN THE LITTLE CARS OF TODAY.ALOT MORE STYLE.I WISH I COULD BUY YOU ONE CASEY. MY NEXT LIFE.
ReplyDeletePAUL, HAVE A NICE TIME.
GOOD MORNING P AND ALL.
GRANNY
Paul: Have a great time in SF! I haven't been there since 1985, but I have several old friends that still live there.
ReplyDeleteOK, Granny, next life is just fine! I think I've been around for many lives, so I'll probably be around for many more.
THEN YOU GOT IT OLD SOUL. LOL
ReplyDeleteGRANNY
Casey, I failed to bring my camera with me yesterday while I went for my Sunday drive. A few miles away near Bar Beach collectors polished and showed their cars to the public. Being the tight budget person I am, I bypassed the admission's gate and used the beach
ReplyDeletein order to make my way over. Paying $15 for a few minutes just didn't make sense.
What was unique about this even were some of the AMC products on display. For the first time ever, I sat in a 1965 Marlin with a stunning silver exterior and re-skinned burgundy leather interior. It only had 15k miles on the odometer.
I wonder if Matchbox has ever made a small scale replica of one?
Corgi made one.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.imagebam.com/image/5378ad99668042
Good for you, Woody! $15 is a pretty high price for admission just to look at someone else's cars!
ReplyDeleteI don't know about a scale model Marlin. I don't think I've ever seen one. I found three large cartons in the attic full of brand new Johnny LIghtning matchbox-sized cars from my spend-thrift days, lol, but I'm pretty sure I don't have a Marlin. I can't wait to have some time to look through them all individually again.
Thanks, Anonymous! Corgis were really nice little scale cars. I had a bunch of them as a kid, but they're among the few things that didn't make it to my adulthood. They were all stolen when I was a kid by one of the neighbors, but no one ever did anything about it. I remember they had rhinestone headlights that twinkled like little diamonds, and they were usually British cars we never saw over here.
ReplyDeleteI've seen photos of this car. Never seen one in person. But this would be the perfect large car for me (had I had the money for it in the '60s) -- large, yet reasonably fast, and that odd combination of luxury (fender skirts) and sport (buckets and console). And, I'm sure, reprehensible gas mileage. What's that, kids -- tired of going over the front seat to get in back? Too bad!
ReplyDeletemy father almost always bought 2 door cars until I was in college. we never thought anything about getting into the backseat that way, lol. I always thought 4 doors were "boring" back then. I've had mostly 4 doors in my lifetime though. The Mercury 429 V8, with 360hp if I remember right, probably got the usual 10-15 mpg, with the 15 on the highway, and 10 around town. My old '68 Caddy had a 472 V8 and I usually got 8 mpg in town and maybe 12 on the highway if I kept it to 60. Great car though!
ReplyDeleteHere's a piece about the '69 Marauder:
ReplyDeletehttp://blog.cardomain.com/2009/02/16/cardomain-obscure-muscle-car-parking-lot-the-1969-70-mercury-marauder-x-100/
And here's a piece about the '70 Marauder:
http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2010/12/curbside-classic-the-bootylicious-1970-mercury-marauder-x-100/
It would appear that fender skirts were available in 1969, but not 1970. The other difference, of course, is that the 1970 Fords had the revolutionary (where is that sarcasm emoticon?) ignition switch on the steering column, whereas '69 owners had to stick their ignition keys into the dashboard. (As with Chrysler and AMC; GM was first with the steering-column ignition switch in '69.)
as far as I know, fender skirts were standard both years. I've never seen one without them. Perhaps they were technically a delete option. I'll have to find my '70 Mercury brochure, but I'm pretty sure I would have noticed that since the fender skirts look so good on them and it was the only Mercury with them in '69 and '70. The Marquis didn't get them until '71's redesign. I remember the ignition switch moving to the steering column. Our '69 GTO was the first of our cars that way and my parents really didn't like it. It felt awkward to them.
ReplyDeleteMy conclusion comes from the chrome trim on the rear wheel openings, which fender-skirted cars would not have. (The one bad thing about fender skirts, as I experienced, was changing a rear tire.) Maybe the fender skirts came with the X-100s.
ReplyDeleteCheck THIS out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGSwXwXuIbU&feature=related
ReplyDeleteI think that we can all agree that THIS is how a car should sound: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kkc5-nkTCdI&feature=related
ReplyDelete