Quite a few similarities here, with a bit if distance. In case you’re wondering about the Mercury’s grille, it’s a Canadian Meteor, actually. Photo by canadiancatgreen.
Cohort Pic(k) of the Day: Kissing Cousins
– Posted on October 23, 2022
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Curbside Classics Archives
The similarities are unnerving. Good thing cars didn’t all look alike back then the way they do now. 🙂
I was going to post something similar about cars all looking the same; it’s not unique to what we’re seeing today.
There’s a magazine illustration out there from the 1930s showing the dozens of U.S. makes available at that time, and just as it is today, all but a few were very similar in appearance. It’s much like trends in kitchen appliances and electronics: The consumer market gravitates toward a certain form, and all but a few manufacturers head in the same direction.
The timing may be off by a few years, but it appears to be another example of how Elwood Engel’s design influence carried over to the Chrysler Corporation, following his at Ford Motor after he left Ford.
The ‘64 Imperial’s similarity to the Continental of the same time, and the ‘63 Chrysler Turbine’s similarity to the Thunderbird, are two other examples that are frequently cited.
Mercury never could figure out what they were supposed to be. Some years they were a junior Lincoln. Some years they were a fancy Ford. Some years they were a Chrysler clone.
Good grief! I never looked at hem this way in all these years. Thanks
Great pic – you can see the Elwood Engel DNA in both….
I’ll bet that a 66 Mercury would look even more like that Chrysler than the 65 Mercury does, with more similar grille shapes.
The front end of those ’65-’66 Mercurys looked too flat and square to me.
My Dad owned a ’65 Impala back in the day and the front end on it was not flat as a pancake.
Excuse me, but isn’t that a 1965 Meteor Montcalm? I didn’t know a thing about Canadian Ford products until you guys here at CC schooled me. So – I’m just a bit surprised that this Meteor Montcalm was mistaken for a Mercury by my teachers.
Was this a test? Teacher, did I do good?
I’d say the Newport, with its complex side sculpting and more dynamic front clip comes off better by comparison. Never could work up much of a lather for this generation of Mercury, “now in the Lincoln Continental tradition.”
Particularly like the “Tokyo Express” business in the background; if there were two less likely cars that I’d associate with Japan, I can’t think of them. When was the last time you saw full sized 2 door cars parked next to each other (outside of a car show or something similar)?
Our next-door neighbor when we lived up in Burlington the first time had the Colony Park wagon version of the Mercury around this generation, think it was ’68 or so. Both of their two cars were Mercuries, they also had a ’63 Comet sedan. Come to think of it, this is probably within a year or so that my family also became a two car family, when my Dad bought a ’59 Beetle which got totalled in 1968 when teenagers who lived at the end of our street plowed into it while it was parked in front of our house…which had a 1 car garage and driveway. It was built new in 1965, we were the original owners, it was our last house with a single driveway (we moved a lot back then, as I originally stated this was during our first tour in Vermont…due to my Dad’s occupation). Our neighbors kept the Comet when they bought the Colony Park, probably a smart move, since they had 4 boys, the oldest of which started driving right before we left (in 1969). One of them was my best friend, so we were back and forth constantly.
Of course, up there we were close to the border with Quebec…if we wanted to go to a city bigger than Burlington, Montreal was significantly closer to us than anything in the states.
Don’t have the experience with the Newport (guessing that’s what it is). My Dad was still into mid-sized cars until he bought a 1969 Ford Country Squire, so we still had our ’65 F85 wagon he’d bought at Val Preda’s to replace our ’63 Rambler Classic wagon (which was totalled outside our motel room right after we’d vacated our house in Catonsville, Md, preparing to move up to Burlington. Gosh, it sounds like my Dad was in a lot of car accidents, these happened within 3 years of each other, but actually other than when my Uncle’s car crashed into a concrete barrier back in the 50’s and the time my middle sister borrowed his car while she was having hers worked on, and she ended up totalling it, that’s about it. That last accident got him into his first Mercury, he owned 3 Sables in a row (guess he liked the dealership)…but he never bought a Chrysler (but my Grandfather did).