1950 Mercury Coupe – The Designer’s Surprise Favorite Over The 1940 Continental

Picture of 1950 Mercury

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.

Photo Credit: Lincoln Media Center

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)