Car Carriers of the Day: A Big Load of 1958 Mercurys
– Posted on July 17, 2020
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Bottom car to the right of the banner – looks like a mess on the hood. And no clear coat!
It looks like someone forgot to tighten the oil drain plug during assembly. The good news is that the dealer could probably charge extra for rustproofing on the bottom car. 🙂
They look to me to be a bunch of cheap ones. I want a Park Lane or a Turnpike Cruiser…
Johnny, show him the features of the all-new Mercury wagon, starting with the whitewall tires.
So a Big L of Big Ms? I wonder how long it took Tonkin Motors to unload that load (to buyers) during the economic crater that was 1958. I guess not as long as it would have taken to unload that many Edsels.
Tonkin Mercury owner probably took a dim view of having the Edsel to compete against since it was pretty obvious to the public that the Edsel wasn’t much more than a Mercury with different styling in the Corsair and Citation models.
Wonder if the district sales manager came hat-in-hand later in 1958 to announce how lucky the Tonkin dealership was, it was being ‘given’ an Edsel franchise for 1959 which happened once the failure of the stand-alone Edsel dealership program was manifest.
From today’s perspective the number of 2drs is shocking.
My dad bought two doors until he thought we were old enough not to open a door and fall out.
Are there even that many 58 Mercs surviving today??
Wonder if the dealer had a Gulf franchise for their oil and gas sales.
Ha! Good one! Unfortunately, the relationship soured a few years later after a major “alleged” incident . . .
Pity the driver of the C series cabover. Loud, slow and either hot or cold depending on the weather. I remember some of these trucks would be stuffed with bundles of shop rags to stop the air leaks and water leaks into the cabs. The later ones were especially bad right out the door. Ford sure got their moneys worth out of the tooling to build these things.
The Ford C series was one of those vehicles that sold enough to keep around, but not enough to update. No matter, it had a following. Very true about cabs on the later versions being rough, I was told Ford (actually Budd) re-tooled the cab sometime in the early 70’s but by the late 80’s the tooling was once again shot. Heard stories about the use of C-clamps and mallets to ‘finesse’ the sheetmetal alignment during assembly. The larger Isuzu/Chevy and Hino tilt-cabs that started showing up in the mid-80’s were better in all respects except for power.
Wonder if any of those Mercurys were Super-Marauder powered!
Looks like a ’49 Ford Custom convertible off to the far right side.
While the 1958 Mercs were still pretty bizarre and over-styled, they don’t compare to the weirdness of the 1957’s, with those Groucho Marx “eyebrows” over the headlights. Lincoln and were the true FoMoCo weirdness kings for ’58. Not that weirdness is a bad thing, of course.
Speaking of weirdness, and I know I’m in the minority here, but I actually like the ’58 Fords, much more than the ’57’s.
This looks like a Mercury-only dealer. Neat to know they existed (if it is that).
They did, quite commonly. The Lincoln-Mercury tie up didn’t happen until the early ’60s, IIRC. It was after the Edsel and Continental fiascoes, when Ford tried to have five divisions. They retreated and created the L-M division.
Some Ford and some Mercury dealers also sold Lincoln back in the day, but it was common to have all three be stand-alone. That was the case in Iowa City in the early ’60s; we had a Ford dealer and a Merc dealer but no Lincoln dealer at all.
The Lincoln-Mercury Division was formed in 1945 during the re-organization of Ford Motor Company in the wake of HFII and the ‘Whiz Kids’ coming to control. Stand-alone Mercury dealerships continued right to the end when there were one or two left. Lincoln wasn’t forced on Mercury dealerships in small-town markets where Lincoln sales couldn’t be supported. We had C.H. Holmes Mercury in Nunda, N.Y. up until 1961 when the late cousin Jack closed to pursue life as a ‘stockbroker’ man-of-leisure, living mostly off his schoolteacher late wife Onalee.
Buffalo, N.Y. had Dankner Mercury advertised as “Western New York’s Largest Mercury Dealer’
There are a lot of blackwall tired two-door sedans – I wonder if these are mostly mid-year Medalists.
The first car that I remember my parents having was a 1958 Voyager 2 door wagon. I think that I see its cousin over on the left!
The rainy weather is the cherry on top of my suspicion this is the same Tonkin family still selling cars in Oregon.
Who likes to tout they are the largest brand X dealer in the largest radius they can claim for that franchise.
If this is the dealer that eventually developed into Ron Tonkin, they are still very much around in the Portland area. They have a number of franchises these days.
Wild to see that 2dr wagon!
Tonkin even sold Ferrari’s, a very diversified lineup, and they’re still one of the Northwest’s largest dealerships today. Though not as large as Lithia, which has grown nationwide but had its origins in Ashland, Oregon, and is named after the mineral springs in the area.
Tonkin Mercury was taking delivery of mostly low-priced Medalist sedans, only one Commuter or Voyager two door hardtop station wagon on the top rack of the truck to the left. Looks like there is a Monterey or two on the lower racks, for what few were still buying upmarket models in recessionary 1958. The ’58 Medalist was about the equivalent to the Ford Custom 300 in trim and interior.