The small town of Auburn, Indiana, was the ancestral home of some of the most titanic machines of the Classic era, and is now home to one of the world’s great automotive museums, the Auburn-Cord-Duesenberg Museum. A short drive away is a lesser-known but very well done counterpart, the Early Ford V-8 Foundation Museum, home to dozens of flathead-era cars built by the Ford Motor Company. Last October, one of the many fine old Fords I saw on a visit was actually a Mercury, this 1950 Coupe. Not only is it one of the few that has escaped the customizer’s torch over the past 75 years, but it is also the surprising favorite design of the man who penned it, Eugene T. “Bob” Gregorie.
As soon as you find the parking lot for the Ford Museum (and it takes a bit), you’ll immediately know that you’re in for a good time. The museum’s sign and marquis were once used at Ford’s Rotunda, one of America’s most-visited tourist attractions until it was destroyed by a fire in 1962. The museum building itself was designed to resemble the Rotunda, so if there’s any Ford Blue in your makeup at all, this is a trip worth making.
Our featured Mercury was a knockout. It’s in well-used but also well-maintained “driver” condition, and its beautiful “Banning Blue” paint color showcased the lines that were drawn by this man, Bob Gregorie. Gregorie grew up around boats in New York, and was first and foremost a yacht designer, but he was determined to succeed in automobile design, and struck out for Detroit just as the Great Depression began. From all I’ve read in his interviews, Gregorie never wanted for money, so he was never in a work-or-starve frame of mind. He was, however, very ambitious and worked for several design houses and even General Motors before landing at Ford.
Ford’s styling department in the prewar era was nothing like that of General Motors. Gregorie and a few dozen men made decisions quickly, and usually with Edsel Ford’s express consent. Mr. Ford visited the design department for about an hour a day; it was his purview in a company that perhaps would have had fewer problems along the way had it given him a little more authority. Upon Edsel Ford’s death in 1943, however, Gregorie left the company, only to be asked to return by Henry Ford II himself when he took control.
Gregorie designed the Mercury to be the new Ford, but George Walker’s more slab-sided and lighter-looking design (the 1950 Ford Crestliner is seen above on the left) was given the green light instead, and Gregorie’s more upscale-looking car became the Mercury and small Lincoln. Gregorie was understandably miffed, as he and Charles Sorensen (one of the elder Henry’s right-hand men) had felt that giving the Ford a more “deluxe-y” appearance was the right call in the heated postwar sales race; therefore, Gregorie left Ford for the last time and returned to his first love: yachts. He never worked in car design again, but instead lived a life in Florida with his boats that was, by all accounts that I’ve read, very satisfying.
C. Edson Armi’s excellent book titled The Art of American Car Design: The Profession and Personalities (1988) has a revealing interview with Mr. Gregorie. He was best-known for designing the 1940 Lincoln Continental (a 1941 model is shown above), one of the Classic era’s great beauties that has long been regarded as a masterwork of styling. Gregorie, however, felt that the Continental represented Mr. Edsel Ford’s tastes more than his own. Don’t mistake this as a lack of respect; it is clear that Bob Gregorie had the utmost esteem for Edsel Ford as a man and a styling critic, but as a stylist himself, he felt that the Continental was a little too restrained, the bumpers too “delicate,” the tail too pinched.
He used an analogy that I will never be able to unsee when looking at a Continental, which is one of my favorite cars: “It reminded me a little bit of a dog with his tail between his legs.” Ouch.
The surprising takeaway from Mr. Armi’s interview with Gregorie was his opinion that the 1949 Mercury was “one of the nicest cars” he designed. The Mercury has long been a favorite of car customizers and has an imposing presence for certain, but his discussion of it explains his rationale in a way that allows the reader to understand it even if they don’t necessarily agree with it. The prevailing winds in car design at the time made cars look like, in Mr. Gregorie’s words, “a loaf of bread.” Without separate “fender identity, fender shapes,” designers lost the “wonderful relief” of the “older cars.” To break this up, he did what his training told him to: he returned to nautical themes.
Namely, he included a “dip in the side highlight line,” which resembled “a drop sheer on a boat.” Gregorie continues:
You take the sheer line of a boat, and you drop the sheer like that, say, in a cabin cruiser. In other words, it was getting this effect: a relief from a continuous, straight-sided look. And for years, they wanted the tail end of the car to be low and look fast, at least in the mind’s eye. I’ve never drawn a car in my life that was higher in the stern than it was in the forward end.
That is certainly the antithesis of modern car design languages, where a wedge-shape is best for…aerodynamics? Trunk room? Regardless, that “sheer line” on the Mercury culminated in a deep dive to the rear bumper’s level, where it wrapped into the rear panel beneath those distinctive cat’s eye taillights. The beltline trim ends at the trunk, and the oval-shaped rear window mirrors the curve of the drip rail but with a tighter radius. I spent a lot of time with the Mercury at the museum, and before then, I had never really appreciated its little design details; truthfully, the myriad customs I have seen for decades soured the car for me entirely (I’m not a big fan of customs, nothing personal). The stock design, however, was clearly the work of a master.
Mr. Gregorie would have had little-or-nothing to do with the Mercury’s interior, but it was designed in the Ford idiom, with plenty of symmetry and brightwork. That seat cover, however, is not original to the car (but has a certain appeal of its own). Every 1950 Mercury had roughly the same drivetrain, a big 255-cubic-inch flathead with 110 horsepower and 200 lb.-ft. of torque mated to a three-speed manual transmission with optional overdrive.
Many fans of the original Continental question how the same man who designed the original Zephyr and the 1940 Continental could have also introduced the 1942 Lincolns with their massive, wide grilles and fenders. Mr. Gregorie liked cars that had “an expression, like a man’s.” Additionally, he felt that Cadillac was heading in the right direction in 1941 (seen above) with a “big, hefty, husky, bold appearance…a great big front end…an architectural front end.” Gregorie was able to convince Edsel Ford that the “Zephyr was getting bony looking,” so in reality, the 1942 Lincolns (and beyond) represented the artist’s true tastes (and the progression of industry-wide styling, something Gregorie was smart enough to always keep in mind), while the lithe 1940-1941 models were more indicative of Edsel Ford’s conservative bent.
Thus we have the Mercury, a fine representation of Gregorie’s sense of nautical and architectural design, combined in a way he thought would be good for the company. The 1950 model shown here certainly does have a wide, bold, expressive “face,” and it differs little from the 1949 model that Gregorie so enthusiastically championed. I’m convinced. From here on out, I am a booster of the “bathtub” Mercs, but make mine stock, and paint it Banning Blue. It’s a beauty.
Related CC Reading
Roadhouse Relic: 1951 Mercury Eight Sends Greetings From Austin (by Robert Kim)
Curbside Classic: 1940-41 Lincoln Continental – A Creation of a Man of Taste and a Man of Talent (by Vince C)
I agree with Gregorie. Never liked the squared-off Continental. Mercury and Hudson looked more like they were eager to move. In ’42 Chrysler had been planning a postwar car with a similar shape, but Keller’s squared-off boxes won. They should have stuck with the original plan.
I have a engine swapping book, by Peterson Publishing Co., circa 1975, and one of the swaps featured is a 455 Olds into a 50 Mercury just like this one. It fit quite well.
These famous Mercs have never really rung my bell .
That being said this is a wonderful survivor .
-Nate
A very neat museum. I went through, a few years ago. Yes, it takes a bit of probing to find the thing, hiding behind the Kruse auction warehouse.
I noticed this tab, with the “full” and “fill” markings on it, bolted to the top of the engine.. Asked the attendant. He commented that, in all the years he had worked there, no-one had ever asked about it. It is for monitoring the oil level in the crankcase. Missing from this engine is a rod that goes down through a hole in the block, to a float, with the top end of the rod showing oil level on the scale on the tab.
One of my favorites at the museum was this wagon.
Yes, the Lincoln Zephyr V12 used that method for keeping track of the oil level, but as far as I know, it gave you no method to check the condition of your oil as a dipstick would. Theoretically, you could have a car with a blown head gasket that was using oil, and everything would seem fine. In reality, you were supposed to change the oil so often that you’d know if there was a problem, but there’s a reason that it wasn’t an engineering breakthrough that lasted.
it gave you no method to check the condition of your oil as a dipstick would
Given the way that engines leaked and burned oil then, a manufacturer would want to make checking the oil by the owner as easy as possible, in the hope he might check occasionally. a 1930s Lincoln owner might not want to deal with a dipstick covered in dirt and oil. Of course, gas station attendants used to always check the oil for you. I don’t remember when it was, that I noticed roads no longer had the big black streak of leaked oil down the center of each lane, that was normal in the 60s. I can see what would go wrong with the float system on the Zephyr engine: the build up of dirt and oil on the engine could clog the hole the rod ran in, preventing the rod moving freely, thus giving a false reading.
Another reason was the PCV valve. Before PCV valves, road draft tubes were the common method of evacuating crankcase fumes from engines. These tubes would constantly expel oil fumes downward onto the road surface. The faster cars traveled, the stronger the suction created by the venturi effect of the air moving past the downdraft tube.
These tubes would constantly expel oil fumes downward onto the road surface
I remember. My dad’s 64 Galaxie with a 289 was notable for the smoke rising from the front, passenger side, wheelwell. He asked the mechanic about it, as he had never noticed it on any of his previous cars. The mechanic explained about the “breather tube”.
Seems oil vapor from the breather tube, or exhaust would be more diffused by the time it landed on the pavement. This is the quad level interchange in LA, pic taken in 1959. Oil slick concentrated between the wheel tracks. This is how I remember all roads looking, at that time.
I built a model kit of one of these back in the early 70’s, and from that time on I have appreciated the lines on these cars. As you say, finding one that has not been significantly messed with has been a rare occurrence for a long, long time. I have seen them in old movies as frequently as anywhere else.
I have read for years that 1949-51 Fords felt cheap and were plagued by squeaks and leaks, but have never read that about the Mercury of that period. This may have been the one time in history when a Mercury was a legitimate and serious step up from a Ford. The 1957-60 era gave the Mercury a bigger car, but not necessarily one that was better. The 1949-51 Mercury customer got the whole package for his extra money.
Special Interest Autos compared a 1950 Oldsmobile 88 to a 1950 Mercury. The author of the article, who drove both cars, deemed the Mercury quieter, and said that it felt more “solid.” He attributed this to the Oldsmobile using the Chevrolet A-body, while the Mercury shared a body with the “junior” Lincolns of this generation.
Think the Cosmopolitan’s continuous fender line from front to rear was the better design. Had the Merc’s front fender line continued its curved sweep until it became flush with the body, the overall design might have looked less disjointed. But then it would look plain in the rear quarter panel.
It’s not surprising to me at all it’s own designer favors the Mercury to the Continental as the Continental ironically was essentially a lead sled Kustom itself, a chopped and sectioned Zephyr built for Edsel’s tastes. I’d be more curious to know where Gregorie would rank the Zephyr among these designs, given his candid take on the Continental not really being truly his I wouldn’t be surprised too if the Zephyr comes ahead as well.
Personally I I like the Mercury better too, the Continental’s best feature was it’s chopping and sectioning job that highlighted the very same feature it shared with the Zephyr; the front end. The facelifted version after completely shatters the illusion of the rest of the design being anything particularly pretty, Gregorie is absolutely right about the rear end in particular.
He wasn’t a big fan of the Zephyr for the same reasons, in addition to the fact that the Zephyr wasn’t really his job either; John Tjaarda at Briggs was responsible for a large part of it. Gregorie just came in and cleaned up the front end for a front-engine architecture and the accompanying radiator, etc.
On my fantasy list of 10 classic cars I’d like to own, the 1949-50 Mercury coupe is the oldest of the group.
My brother built the AMT model of the ’49 Mercury and later turned it into a junkyard scene. I found it in our mother’s basement when I was cleaning out her house.