It always feels like perpetual spring in the Bay Area, so it’s almost always “Convertible Weather”. Within hours it can be miserable, and even 30 Rock reminded us locals to “always carry a light sweater.” What car could be the full equivalent of a “light sweater?” Once upon a time I suspect Bay Area residents found their answer in Mercury Breezeway models.
If there’s ever been a car that the expression “I haven’t seen one of those in forever” didn’t apply to (along with a Falcon or a W123 Mercedes), its the Mercury Breezeways, oddly enough. Maybe because they are so eccentric, with their reverse slant rear windows and patio like trunks. But it’s not like Mercury sold boatloads of them in the mid 1960s.
In the last three weeks I’ve seen three different ones nonchalantly taking in the late winter good weather, none looking too out of place considering their ages, like this plum and pinkish 1964 Park Lane.
Or this Montclair hardtop, just contemplating old age in the shade in San Francisco. There’s no less than three for sale on Craigslist right now, including a garage find 1966 Park Lane that probably has never seen much other than the garage and Hillsdale Mall. Nothing says springtime compromise than a sedan with a rolldown rear window for that carefree, wind at the back of your neck feeling, just in case the fog rolls back in at sunset.
The only way I can calm my suspicions is to ask Bay Area native/Curbside readers like Billy Rockfish if these beguiling beasts were common sights when new. Whatever reason, ’tis the season to crack open your (back) window.
Not to be outdone (although it was earlier than the subject car), at last weekend’s AutoBarn, I saw this 1960 Lincoln Continental convertible with the same rear window treatment. THAT is novel, not only is it a convertible, it has a power sliding rear window. Apparently this way if you want a lot of air, but don’t want to put the top down, just open all the windows.
the mercury turnpike cruiser had a convertible in 1957- dont know if this window was on the covertible version
btw the 1957 mercury turnpike cruiser was the first car to have this feature
That’s crazy; I didn’t believe this is *actually* a convertible, and not a 2dr HT with vinyl top, until I saw the photo with the top going down
Looks like the same car that I saw last weekend.
Check it out-
Interesting that you should run across so many of these lately (relatively speaking) in your neck of the woods. I have not seen one in a long time, either where I used to live in San Diego or where I am now, the Palm Springs area. Our family had the ’63 Monterey Custom 4 door hardtop in Jamaica yellow, just like the one you have pictured (or is that Sultana white, in a golden sunset glow?). The upholstery was a neat beige box pleat fabric that seemed sumptuous to us. The folks took delivery on Christmas Eve, 1962 (a cool Christmas present for this kid). Turned out to have a lot of problems, though, repetitive stalling at inopportune moments, brake failure, air conditioning issues, but then we thought that was more or less normal in those days. My dad finally traded it in on a 1965 Lincoln Continental, but we loved that Breezeway rear window, I recall it being down more often than not. I never missed a chance to ask dad for the keys when I was in high school, it was a very impressive car. You would in fact see a fair number of these in the L.A. area back then.
It’s one of those French bulldog cars,ugly and beautiful at the same time
I had an “Aha” moment the other day when perusing a book on Cliff May and the modern ranch house. Therein is a photograph with one of the “breezeway” Lincoln Continentals parked in the carport of one of Cliff May’s quintessential California ranch houses with a pitched roof. I could not visualize any other car as perfectly suited for this mid-century modern setting as one of these sharp-angled breezeway models. The cars definitely look best in the appropriate environment.
Back in the 70s a friend with the GTX 440 and 4-speed had folks with the Mercury and the power down-it-goes rear window.
In a hovel outside the cruising capital of Modesto, it was.
It was groovy. The car, the car, the hovel and the people.
Well done, Laurence! Growing up in Marin/the City, I remember seeing these. Not a common sight, but they were there nonetheless. The guy who took over my scout troop (Troop 36, San Rafael) was Mr. Robt. McEchran. He had a being ’64 Breezeway Park Lane. Beige with a tan interior. I got to know that one quite well because we went up to Sierra Camp up/back home in it. Six of us with all our stuff in the trunk. Never broke a sweat ascending the Sierras. Power everything, but a/c – common in the Bay Area back in the day. I believe it belonged to HIS grandmother . . . .
I learned recently that they continued the breezway window for 2 more years in 1967-68. with a normal roofline, I have never seen one in person.
Though you could only drop it 2 inches…..Boooo.
Ford really wanted to offer cars that could give owners a convertible sensation. So, when GM came out with the hardtop, Ford must have gone crazy. Within a model cycle, Mercury had a plexiglass roof model, the Sun Valley, Ford began developing the covertible hardtop, the Sunliner, Thunderbird and Lincoln began offering convertibles that disappeared into trunks, and Mercury and Lincoln began offering electric rear windows.
Why did this end? AMC owned Kelvinator and by the mid-50s, offered auto air conditioning as an affordable option – air conditioning that fit under the hood, and worked well. So, instead of the hardtop boom in the early 1950s issuing a demand for new ways to cool a car through novelty roofs and windows, AMC and Kelvinator offered what the public really wanted – cheap air conditioning that really worked.
What we end up seeing by the mid-1960s, is flow through ventilation with air conditioning. AMC began to offer the Ambassador with air conditioning standard, the first car company to do so.
Air conditioning changed things in the auto industry.
Ford was a big lover of those bubble roofs, I think every 50’s concept car they did had one form or another.
Yeah, air is something we take for granted, I recall an older gentleman telling me about his parents having the first air conditioned Olds 98 in Miami, and the stares they would get in traffic.
The irony is that while the bubble-top cars didn’t sell well in the early ’50s (nor did the sunroof Ford offered on the 1960 Thunderbird), by the mid-70s the moonroof (which I think Ford might have been the first to really promote) was the hot ticket. An idea ahead of its time.
It’s true about early air conditioned cars getting stares from other motorists – my parents had good friends who purchased a new “53 Cadillac Coupe de Ville with factory installed Frigidaire air conditioning. My mother, now 92, still recalls a summer trip to Myrtle Beach riding with the windows rolled up in cool comfort. At traffic lights, she said motorist along side would notice the outside air scoops and the tinted windows up and point and stare at this car.
It was this experience that motivated my father to get his first air conditioned car a couple of years later. Once you have a/c and experience it, you do not want to be without it, ever.
Mr. Bill
Hamlet, NC
I don’t think that the take-rate on air conditioning was really all that high until the mid to late 1960s. Everyone had decent air conditioning by 1956 or 57, even Studebaker. Maybe it was growing up in northern Indiana, but I don’t really recall air reaching that tipping point where it started to become common until maybe 1969 or so. I am sure that it was quite a bit sooner in the southern states.
Also, AMC probably had a pretty good system, but in my part of the country, I certainly do not recall any rush by people to buy AMC cars because of inexpensive air conditioning. AMC may have owned Kelvinator, but GM owned Fridigaire and Chrysler owned Airtemp
A/C, while widely available nominally by 1956, installation rates were almost directly proportional to a car’s selling price. The air conditioning option often commanded between 3-10% of the price of a car depending on the model, and quite often, was the most expensive individual option. At Cadillac, for example, installations ran about 50% by 1960 to about 90% by 1969. Interestingly, A/C was not officially standard until the middle of the 1974 model year. I have seen pics of a very early 1974 Cadillac without a/c, however the last non-a/c Cadillac that I have seen in the flesh was a 1970 deVille Convertible. A car owned by a local club member, it was triple white and I considered purchasing it to make a Boss Hogg (Dukes of Hazzard) tribute car out of it. It originally was sold in the Seattle, Washington area most likely explaining its lack of a/c.
At Oldsmobile, as I recall roughly in the 1970s, a/c installations ran something like this:
Ninety Eight/Toronado (95% until it was made standard)
Eighty Eight (about 2/3 with a surprisingly high amount of them non-a/c)
Cutlass (50%)
Omega (40%)
When the Firenza came out in the early 1980s, a/c installation was about 50/50 rising to about 75% when the car was discontinued in 1988. The Cavaliers and Sunbirds had less a/c content as many of those models were sold for economy reasons. I have know as late as early 90s Cavaliers without a/c primarily to older people looking for the cheapest car possible. I have seen Ford Rangers as late as 1996 without a/c primarily as fleet vehicles. Compact pickups like the S10 often had a large percentage without a/c due to their utility use, even V6 models.
Until the early late 1970s early 1980s with the advent of redesigned and lighter a/c components (like the Harrison R4 compressor), a/c was a bulky, heavy and often power robbing component that was an expensive installation and an expensive fix. The old A4 Harrison and York compressors used by Ford and Chryslers were beasts. A/C use on engines smaller than V8s often compromised power and fuel economy. Today, though, a/c has only a marginal effect on most drivetrain systems.
Most of the Cadillacs without air were hearse and ambulance combos towards the end, I’ve seen some hearses with radio delete too.
Yea from what I saw with Cadillac, once Climate Control came out in 1964 (the first for the industry) the adaptation of air became more rapid. Now it is hard to find cars today that even have manual a/c.
No radios in professional cars are understandable given the nature of the vehicle, but as we discussed in the piece with the Pinto/Bobcat wagon with radio delete, most of those cars were lower end cars. I do not remember the last time I saw a radio delete on a car above a compact since the 1960s. The last GM car I saw with radio delete was a 1985 Pontiac 6000 coupe purchased by an uncle of mine who was something of an audiophile and had a system installed in it afterwards. Years ago you could do deletes fairly easily but now, with the sophisticated wiring, its almost not even cost effective for the manufacturer to offer it.
Your figures sort of echo my family’s experience. Other than a couple of outlying elderly (and wealthy) relatives who got air conditioned Cadillacs in 1962 and 63, nobody in my extended family (including in-laws) had an air conditioned car before 1967 – and that one was a Cadillac too, albeit a Calais with crank windows. The next was an aunt and uncle’s 68 Delta 88, followed by a 69 Delta 88 that my father picked out for a company car, then a 69 Ford LTD that he picked up when he left the company that year. My grandma bought a 69 Catalina without air, and everyone thought she had made a mistake. 2 years earlier, nobody would have thought so.
After that point, it was only cheaper, smaller cars that you would usually find without air. I remember a 74 LeMans on the lot that my mother liked, but when the salesman sheepishly said “no air”, she said “no thanks.”
The last car that any close family member of mine had that was originally equipped without factory a/c (I say that because there were many cars floated around with broke a/c…) was a 1978 Pontiac Phoenix sedan. Our first a/c equipped car was a 1972 Pontiac Bonneville. 400 4bbl with Harrison A4 4lb R12 system you could hang meat in that car. I realize I am extremely biased in saying this, but for a long time GM had the best a/c systems going.
The air conditioned GM cars of my youth were cold indeed.
I remember reading an issue of Consumer Reports in the mid-1970s where the editors said that GM’s air conditioning systems were the most effective in the industry.
In the early 1970s, it was still a big deal when someone bought a brand-new car with air conditioning. By that time, however, we expected all brand-new Cadillacs, Lincolns, Imperials, New Yorkers, Ninety-Eights, Toronados, Electras and Rivieras to be equipped with air conditioning. We would have thought it odd for someone to have purchased one of those cars without air conditioning. Of course, in our small town, it was still a big deal when someone purchased one of those cars!
I lived in San Jose (a few years in Sunnyvale) from ’74 to ’03 and I don’t recall seeing any Breezeway Mercs there. When we lived in the burbs of Chicago (LaGrange area) we had a ’66 Monterey Breezeway, and another family in our largish church (maybe 1000 members) had a ’65. They were sort of practical in Chicago–cheaper than AC at least.
FWIW, a doctor who belonged to the church had a Chrysler Turbine for the usual 6 months.
As a non smoker it would be great for getting rid of cigarette smoke though I never allowed smoking in any of my cars
I kind of like the Breezeway now, but as a kid, I thought it made Mercuries look weird. It was hard to avoid the Breezeway roof on Mercuries from around 63-65. It could be done, and I always thought the cars with more conventional roofs were more attractive. I have always wondered if the Breezeway roof hurt the brand more than helped it in those years.
I once had a Honda Del Sol, I believe it was called with a retractable rear window. Best feature of the car except for the motor. Rain, snow, or sunny sky, I always dropped the window.
Wow. I wonder how “Mercury, the man’s car” would have been received in later years?
The “Brougham” era basically killed that marketing line for Mercury. Then it became stuff an overstuffed version of Ford products. Remember the ultimate “cool guy” on TV in the late 1960s was Jack Lord in Hawaii Five-O who drove a 1968 Mercury Park Lane (and then a 1974 Marquis Brougham).
I think the Breezeway window is an interesting feature, and it has made a return on the current generation Mitsubishi Triton pickup on the top level trim which has a retractable rear window.
Given it has similar reverse-angle window, I wonder if anyone has converted a Ford Anglia (the Harry Potter car) to a breezeway?
The closest I’ve come to one of these is driving my ute without the rear window at the drag strip. With the side windows wound up, the only difference from normal was hearing the outside noise, even at 90+mph.
Growing up in the UK in the 60s the Anglia and it’s bigger brother the ClasIc were a common sight.My only other memory of non American slant backs was a French car(Citroen?) an exchange teacher had..
Ah yes, I think that was the what-were-they-thinking/smoking Citroen Ami 8
Wow, a lot of interesting stuff here that I was previously unaware of… all I can add is that the clip from 30 Rock is hilarious.
For some reason I always disliked the reverse slant rear window. I understand how Mercury offered it back then to help distinguish itself from Ford, but Lincoln had long moved on, making that style on the Merc look very old.
If I may jump in this conversation, you will find plenty more American and non-American reverse slanted rear windows on this blog: http://autos-lunette-arriere-inversee.blogspot.fr/ including the Citroën Ami 6 (not the Ami 8, which was comparatively more in line with accepted aesthetic standards).
This will definitely provide an elaborate answer to Gem Whitman’s query, but those like nikita might cringe.