1949 MERCURY TWO DOOR CLUB COUPE / MILD CUSTOM
Without a doubt one of the most iconic cars ever built to hot rodders and customizers is the 1949 to 1951 Mercury. These cars were well liked on day one when they were new by the public and by the automotive press at the time. Some people said that just sitting still there was a flow of the body lines that made it look like it was moving. I don’t know if I’d personally go quite that far but, I can say that in my opinion the styling was certainly among the best looking cars at the time even in totally stock condition.
These cars had an explosion in popularity when the hot rodders and customizers in the late forties’ and fifties started paying some serious attention to them. A perfect example of this was when a young Navy veteran named Bob Hirohata owned a ’49 Mercury that had been mildly customized by the previous owner at a shop in Lynwood California. The shop was owned by a couple of brothers, Sam and George Barris. Bob liked the car he had but, when he saw the chopped Merc that Sam Barris owned they as the story goes he fell in love with it. So, he went out and purchased a very gently used (practically new) ’51 Merc and went back to the Barris shop and said something to the effect like “let’s go crazy and build something radical that nobody has ever seen before”. Well, as they say the rest is history. That fabulous Mercury survives today and we think it’s universally considered to be among the most beautiful custom cars ever built.
The mystique around these 1949 to 1953 Mercury’s has never died. The enthusiasm for these cars quickly became legendary when a movie came along named Rebel without a Cause in 1955 which featured a fairly unknown actor (at the time) named James Dean. Then again when a movie like Grease came out in 1978 and once again excited an entirely new generation of car lovers to these cars. These days the cars remain as popular as they were when they were new. To me it’s hard to think of any other 1949 to 1953 car that’s as Kool as these cars are.
The fact that these were appreciated from day one definitely has improved their survival rate. These cars seem to primarily fall into three different camps, i.e. the cars that are stock, the cars like this one that that are mildly customized & updated with vastly improved performance, safety, reliability and creature comforts or finally the heavily customized cars such as the wild lead sleds. There’s no doubt that they’re all nice but, there are many people looking for one that is (in our opinion) the best compromise. We feel that it’s exactly what we have here with this mild custom ’49 Mercury Club Coupe that we're offering for sale.
These days there’s a lot of collectors who have great memories of the cars they owned back in the day when they were much younger and life was a lot simpler. That’s exactly what’s happening here as the current owner of this car had a ’49 Merc. like this one approx. sixty-five years ago when he was in high school. This car has been a part of his prominent collection in Scottsdale, AZ of which I am the collection manager since 2005. The cars in the collection are being liquidated due to the age of the owner.
This Mercury is an older build, completed around 2000 but, it sure doesn’t look like it. Some people who’ve seen it think we just finished restoring it. They wonder why does it look so good with that many years on the restoration. Well, there are a number of reasons and here are a couple of them….For one thing the car is primarily used just for display. It isn’t kept in a normal garage but, rather in a beautiful, temperature controlled showroom with polished floors and automotive themed memorabilia on the walls. Another reason is the very limited amount of driving this car has had at the mercy of the road and other drivers. What we do here with the collection cars is start them up perhaps once or twice a month and warm them up to operating temperature. We do drive them on rare occasions but, it’s limited to good weather days and on clean, not heavily traveled roads.
Here’s some discussion about certain aspects of the car that you’ll want to know….
Paint and body work = In our opinion the body is in exceptionally good condition. We feel that all of the panel gaps are very good and we definitely don’t see ripples, waves or dents as we look down the sides of the body. However, underneath the car the chassis is not show quality. True it’s been cleaned and painted over the years and we have lots of photos we can send you but, it’s more of a driver quality car underneath than a show car. On the other side of the coin the paint on this car is in a word…amazing! It’s a deep, rich maroon (sort of an eggplant color) with beautiful, very subtle ghost flames on the hood and along the sides of the body. In today’s world (at least around here) a paint job like this can easily run over twenty-five grand these days.
Interior The interior is equally beautiful in comparison to the paint job. Some people think its leather because of the grain and feel of it but, we think it’s a very high grade of tan vinyl with beautiful stitching and pleating. The headliner is one of the nicest we’ve seen in quite a few years. Seeing stitching that is so straight and precise is a talent we don’t see very often anymore.
Mechanical condition = The engine in the car is a Chevy 350 with a beautiful and extensive engine dress up kit on it. The engine runs very well and sounds just as it should. The car has glass pack mufflers on it and the sound is a deep mellow tone that a number of people have told us they really like. Also, the chrome side pipes are functional if you remove the chrome covers. The transmission is (as I recall) a turbo 350 with overdrive. The transmission shifts very well and we’ve seen no sign of mechanical trouble. We think there are approximately three thousand miles on this build which is in our opinion a good number so it has enough miles on it to work out any bugs that are typical in a new build. But, it’s also true that cars that sit have needs that cars that are driven frequently don’t have. Whenever a person purchases a car that’s been sitting they should examine anything that might deteriorate due to time or lack of use.
Options and features = The Mercury we have for sale has the following options but, I might have missed a few. What I see is A/C and heat, power windows, tilt steering wheel, up graded Kenwood stereo system with disc player, power antenna and front disc brakes. The car has the very popular smoothed firewall with the very important factory stamped VIN number clearly visible on the frame. There’s a chrome treatment on the headlights and “blue dot” tail lights that were very popular back in the 1950’s. The polished waterfall grill in this car is special because it’s handmade and they very creatively cut and modified three original grills to make this one custom grill. The car has some beautiful pin striping on the body and in the engine compartment. From what we’ve been told this alone could potentially cost in the neighborhood of twenty-five hundred dollars these days.
Conclusion = In our opinion this is an excellent opportunity for someone to acquire a beautiful ’49 Mercury club coupe at a fraction of the cost to build it today. Our asking price is $49,500 as a place to start talking. But, the owner of the car is motivated to sell this one and the others in the collection. Please contact us and we’ll hopefully be able to put together a deal that will work for everyone.
