1963 Mercury Monterey S-55 Two-Door Hardtop: One-Year-Only Bucket-Seat Breezeway

While the 1967–1968 Cougar remains most people’s favorite Mercury, the brand’s most distinctive models were certainly the 1963–1966 Breezeway cars, with their reverse-slant C-pillars and retractable rear windows. Although most Breezeways were sedans, there was also a two-door hardtop, which in 1963 was offered in sporty S-55 trim, with bucket seats and a center console. This Pink Frost survivor is one of those rare two-door bucket-seat Breezeway S-55 cars, which were only available for a single year.

Mercury Breezeway styling can be traced back to a 1956 concept car called the XM-Turnpike Cruiser, designed by John Najjar and Elwood Engel and built in Italy by Carrozzeria Ghia. It was a two-door hardtop with a whole array of 1950s Jet Age gimmicks. (This is the actual XM-Turnpike Cruiser, which was eventually sold to a private buyer and has fairly recently been restored.)

From the rear three-quarter view, you can see that the XM-Turnpike Cruiser didn’t actually have reverse-slant pillars — the roof section aft of the “butterfly” panels seemed to float on the curved rear quarter glass and inset rear pillars. Although the center section of the glass broadly resembles the production Breezeway, the back glass was fixed, not retractable.

Mercury Division general manager Francis C. (Jack) Reith loved this design and decided to put a variation of it into production as the 1957–1958 Turnpike Cruiser, flagship of a disastrous attempt to push Mercury upmarket. (This revised roof design was also adopted for the 1958 Continental Mark III.)

One of the many gimmicks of the Turnpike Cruiser was “Breezeway Ventilation”: Cabin air was drawn in through vents above the windshield rather than through the cowl.

On the Turnpike Cruiser, the center section of the backlight was also retractable, allowing “a gentle, refreshing flow of fresh air to pass through the car.” It was power-operated, using the same mechanism as the power tailgate window available on station wagons. In addition to better ventilation, Mercury claimed that this roof provided better rear headroom and shaded rear passengers from the sun. It was an interesting idea, but the Turnpike Cruiser was a commercial flop, and was withdrawn after 1958.

However, the Continental version (also with a retractable rear window) stuck around through 1960.

I’ve never been clear on what motivated Lincoln-Mercury general manager Ben Mills (who succeeded Jack Reith when Lincoln and Mercury were reunited in 1957) to sign off on reviving the Breezeway roof for the 1963 Mercury line. Whatever its practical advantages, it hadn’t sold well the first time around, and it was associated with a very bad period for Mercury. Jack Reith’s Ford career had ended under a cloud (he went to the Crosley Division of AVCO Corp. for a while, but died of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound in July 1960), and the Mercury brand was still teetering, sustained mostly by the success of the compact Comet.

Still, I suppose Mills felt he needed to do something. Sales of the full-size Mercury line were still languishing at about one-third of their mid-’50s level, and the midsize Meteor (initial Mercury version of the intermediate Fairlane) was a flop. The spring 1962 launch of the Monterey S-55, a buckets-and-console hardtop or convertible similar to the Galaxie 500/XL, hadn’t helped much: It sold only 4,087 cars through the end of the 1962 model year.

I tend to associate the Breezeway design with four-door sedans, since those sold much better than the other body styles and survived for longer, but in 1963, there were also two-door sedans and two- and four-door hardtops. (Mercury also offered convertibles and Colony Park station wagons this year, but those obviously didn’t share the Breezeway roof.)

The Monterey Breezeway two-door hardtops were not shockingly rare, but with only 17,435 built this year across three model series, their sales qualified as “grim.” Because they were overshadowed by the mid-year introduction of the fastback Marauder hardtop, they seem to be especially obscure today.

Even discounting its unusual Pink Frost metallic paint, this S-55 two-door hardtop is a strange-looking car, with a recognizably ’50s roof shape married to a variation on the soberer 1963 Ford Galaxie shell.

The 1963 Monterey was far less gimmicky than the earlier Turnpike Cruiser, but that was part of the problem. Whatever you thought of the ’50s Turnpike Cruisers, they were of a piece. In isolation, the roof seemed that much stranger, more out of place.

The effect is not unlike what the Vegas strip would look like if you bulldozed all but one casino and replaced the rest with generic office buildings. I’m reminded of Shelley’s Ozymandias: “Nothing beside remains. Round the decay / Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare / The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

The Breezeway roof had the same claimed advantages as before: better headroom and less solar heating for rear passengers, and good ventilation for all. Car Life said the Breezeway “rear window provides the best ventilation and rearward visibility we’ve yet found on a ’63 car,” while Motor Trend (whose editors are pictured above) explained:

We found the ideal way to keep a supply of fresh air flowing through the Mercury was to open one or both of the dash-controlled cowl vents with the rear window part way down. The additional wind noise that goes with open side windows or wind wings didn’t occur. We did find that to open the rear window all the way at highway speeds was to invite swirling, uncomfortable drafts.

The concern with opening rear windows (or a station wagon driven with the tailgate open) is always the risk of drawing exhaust fumes into the car under some driving conditions, causing carbon monoxide poisoning. None of the contemporary reviews I’ve seen (including from Consumer Reports publisher Consumers Union, which was usually alert to safety hazards) seemed very worried about that, but it had been a problem with the Turnpike Cruiser, at least at higher speeds. Breezeway fans insist it doesn’t draw exhaust fumes into the car, but since carbon monoxide is odorless and invisible, that’s not entirely reassuring.

CO poisoning or no, the Monterey S-55 came with the usual fancy trim, beginning with the S-55 badges on the rear fenders.

The S-55’s standard equipment included wheel covers, although whitewall tires were extra.

Backup lights (the center taillight) were standard on the S-55, Monterey Custom, and Colony Park in 1963; they still cost $10.70 extra on a base Monterey.

The big attraction of the S-55, as with the Galaxie 500/XL, was the fancy all-vinyl interior, which featured vinyl-upholstered bucket seats, a center console, padded dashboard, and abundant bright metal trim.

An S-55 was hundreds of dollars more than a Galaxie 500/XL, but that did buy you a fancier instrument panel with gauges rather than lights for oil pressure and amperage. I don’t know how much fun all this brightwork would be on a sunny day, and some contemporary testers were very sour on it; Car Life complained that “the overall effect is of Wurlitzer nickelodeon.” Incidentally, the control for the power rear window is on the left side of the dashboard, under the fuel gauge.

Curiously, neither the early 1963 Monterey brochure nor my 1963 Auto Bluebook price guide indicates that power windows were available on the Monterey, even at extra cost, but Motor Trend‘s four-door Monterey sedan had them, so they were available at least part of the year. Note the red and white courtesy lights on the door, a special S-55 feature.

The claims of improved headroom with the Breezeway roof weren’t borne out by the AMA specifications, which show the two-door Monterey hardtops having very slightly less head and legroom than a Ford Galaxie two-door hardtop. There was a decent amount of space in back, however, and Mercury didn’t try to sculpt the rear seat into pseudo-buckets to exclude a rear center passenger. (Note also that unlike the console in the 1963 Oldsmobile Starfire and Ninety-Eight Custom Sports Coupe, the S-55 console didn’t extend any farther back than the front seat backs, so it didn’t interfere with rear passenger foot room.)

As in the Galaxie, the trunk was enormous in length and width, but rather shallow. Mercury claimed 16.2 cu. ft. of usable luggage capacity.

I mentioned earlier that the S-55 was rather expensive: a two-door hardtop like this started at $3,650, which didn’t include this car’s power steering ($106.20), power brakes ($43.20), or pushbutton radio ($58.50).

However, the price DID include your choice of 4-speed manual or console-shifted 3-speed Merc-O-Matic, which cost $220.90 on other models. Note that the quadrant has D2 and D1 ranges; like the mechanically identical Ford Cruise-O-Matic, this transmission could start in either 1st or 2nd gear. It was a better choice than the rare 4-speed; Car Life found that the console “puts the 4-speed shift lever too far away from the driver for good, clean shifts.”

In 1963, Mercury didn’t offer either sixes or small V-8s in the full-size line; buyers who wanted a six were far more likely to buy a Comet. The base Monterey and Monterey Custom came with the two-barrel 390 cid FE engine, with 250 gross horsepower, but the S-55 came with the Z-code 390, with a four-barrel carburetor and 300 hp. The Z-code engine was $51.50 on lesser models. You could also have the 406, making 385 gross hp with a four-barrel carburetor or 405 hp with three two-barrels, replaced mid-year by the R-code 427 with 425 hp. However, these hot engines were available only by special order, were very expensive, weren’t available with power steering or power brakes, and came with a much stiffer suspension, so they were installed in tiny numbers.

With the Z-code 390 — which included dual exhausts — mated to the standard Merc-O-Matic and 3.00 axle, Car Life found the S-55 was capable of 0 to 60 in 10 seconds and ran the quarter mile in 16.4 seconds. That was no match for the 4-speed R-code 427, of course, which got to 60 mph in 7 seconds flat with a 4.11 axle, but the four-barrel 390 provided okay performance for a car like this.

As before, Mercury used some tricks to improve the ride quality of its basically conventional double wishbone/leaf spring suspension, including a cranked compliance link for the lower front wishbone and “Cushion-Link” front shackles for the rear springs. Previously, Consumer Reports had praised this setup for providing noticeably less harshness over small bumps than an equivalent full-size Ford, but for 1963, Ford had adopted the same features, so the Mercury no longer had any substantive advantages in the chassis department.

Mercury still used softer springs than Ford and had over 200 lbs more sprung weight, but that wasn’t necessarily a virtue, causing a mushy ride and rather sloppy handling even by the standards of the time. Consumer Reports, which was normally critical of heavy-duty suspensions, suggested that the H-D option was a must for the Mercury wagons. It probably would have been desirable for the S-55 as well, but I don’t think it was commonly ordered. (The normal heavy-duty suspension retained the compliance links, which were deleted on the extra-heavy-duty “non-anti-harsh” suspension included with the 406 and 427.)

Although it wasn’t introduced until about two months after the other 1963 models, Mercury also added an S-55 four-door hardtop to match the four-door 1963 Galaxie 500/XL. The four-door S-55 started at $3,715, and sold poorly — total production for 1963 was only 1,203.

The Breezeway S-55 two-door models didn’t sell very well either, with model year production totaling just 3,863 cars. The S-55 convertible sold only 1,379 units.

Mid-year, Mercury introduced the first Marauder, which was an S-55 hardtop with the new slantback roof, added to support a return to NASCAR competition. Despite its late introduction, production totaled 2,317 cars, better than either the four-door or the convertible.

Mills apparently decided the writing was on the wall and discontinued the S-55 after the 1963 model year. For 1964, Mercury reintroduced the mid-price Montclair and senior Park Lane series and added Marauder two- and four-door hardtops to each series. The equipment of the previous S-55 model was shifted to a new $369.50 sports package option, available on two- or four-door Park Lane Marauder hardtops (meaning you could no longer get bucket seats on any of the Breezeway cars). That plan lasted only one year; for 1965, Mercury tried offering the individual pieces as separate options for the Monterey instead. As I’ve previously discussed, the S-55 was revived for 1966, to no great commercial success. It reverted to option package status again for 1967 and was finally dropped for good after that.

The Breezeway roof stuck around in its most recognizable form through 1966, but after 1964, it was available only as a four-door sedan. For 1967 and 1968, Mercury offered a subtler version with a recessed rear window that could retract a few inches. By that time, Ford’s improvements in flow-through ventilation (used on the Thunderbird and four-door hardtops) had made the Breezeway window basically obsolete, and Mercury buyers didn’t seem sufficiently attached to it to keep it around beyond 1968.

People often insist that the Mercury brand failed because it wasn’t sufficiently different from regular Ford products in styling and content, but Mercury’s periodic efforts to differentiate itself more or move upscale often had very mixed results. This S-55 Breezeway two-door hardtop was certainly different, but not necessarily more desirable for it, and I think a lot of Mercury fans would rather have the sleeker Marauder.

Wouldn’t you?

 

Related Reading

1962 Mercury Monterey S-55: Big, Bold, Late Space-Age Luxury (by Stephen Pellegrino)

Curbside Classic: 1963 Mercury Marauder S-55 Convertible – Making Sense Of It All (by Jason Shafer)

Curbside Classic: 1963 Mercury Monterey Breezeway – The Cure for the Heatwave (by Laurence Jones)

Curbside Capsule: 1964 Mercury Monterey Breezeway – A Case of Mistaken Identity? (by Ed Stembridge)

Curbside Find: 1965 Mercury Park Lane Breezeway Sedan – Boxy Breeze (by Rich Baron)

Car Show Classic: 1965 Mercury Park Lane Breezeway Sedan – The Old Neighborhood (by Aaron65)

1966 Mercury S-55 Convertible: One of Only 669 S-55 Ragtops With The Super Marauder 428, So Why Did It Keep Failing To Sell? (by me)