Why did this Mercury have to present itself? And, to make matters worse, how was it able to present such an effective and persuasive argument for being granted the time commitment to allow it a moment of internet glory? It somehow made a formidable enough case for itself that its talents of persuasion are likely the envy of both trial lawyers and Don Juan’s everywhere.
Despite my initial reluctance and apprehension about devoting time to this wagon being like that of a curious teetotaler at a keg party, by the indescribable grace of automotive provenance my trepidation has been whipped away quicker than an eager groom can get his new bride disrobed in an overpriced hotel room. Apparently there are more than seven wonders in this world.
Had this Mercury been a 1964 model, or even better the disrespected 1962, I would have been throughly unabashed and vigorously penning virtual reams of paper cooing the never-ending attributes this Colony Park faster than a late model Mercury depreciates. But, no, it’s a 1963, a model of Mercury in which this will be the third example I’ve written up. The luck of automotive findings can be so ruthlessly cruel.
Thinking about it in great depth, it’s that model name which has lured me in like a catfish to stink bait. Colony Park. It sounds so majestic, so regal, so grandiose. Obviously, the third time is the charm – although if I find yet another body style of ’63 Mercury all bets are off and we’ll be subjected to Round Four.
Upon deep consideration and introspection, maybe writing up this Mercury indicates I am glutton for punishment. Or perhaps due to my self-appointment as the CC Chief Mercury Fanboi & Apologist™ I feel compelled to bring Mercury some long overdue glory and accolades, something it rarely enjoyed during its lifetime. Or maybe my chronic case of Mercury poisoning, along with my CC Contract, requires me to write about a Mercury with some regularity. It wouldn’t be fair to make anyone suffer from withdrawal symptoms.
But it’s really just the name “Colony Park” which has me fired up like a supercharged Ford FE engine running on 103 octane racing fuel.
This time.
Ford possessed and maintained a certain charisma and slyness in naming their wagons as Colony Park sounds so much more enticing than Pontiac Safari, Olds Custom Cruiser, or Buick Estate. One gives a mental picture of steaming piles of rhinoceros crap, another conjures up images of the constabulary, while the third makes it sound like the reading of a deceased person’s last will and testament. Nothing tempting there.
Colony Park.
It sounds so 1770s American, providing a whiff of the pride of the colonies right before the bloody ruckus that resulted with our evicting the British from these shores (well, at least until 1812). But let’s come back to this as we need to dive deeper into Ford’s wagon naming schemes as it’ll only serve to better amplify the sweet tongue candy and auditory ecstasy that is “Colony Park”.
At the low end of the Ford Food Chain, one could find the Country Sedan.
It’s a decent name but far from exciting. One could speculate such wagons could have been named Rural Saloon, but in America the word “saloon” has a more pervasive association.
Watching a 1960s episode of Gunsmoke or any number of countless western movies will give testimony about the word “saloon” meaning different things in different locales.
Speaking of Gunsmoke, what exactly did Miss Kitty do for a living?
An alternative would have been to take a more populated approach. Urban Sedan? No, there’s nothing to quicken the pulse with that name.
Going a step upwards, Ford’s Country Squire paints an intriguing mental picture of portly gentlemen of noble lineage traipsing around the English countryside. The name makes a certain degree of sense given Henry Ford’s father William was born in neighboring Ireland’s County Cork. With all the knightly association of the Norman invasion of England and Ireland, it makes sense.
Plus, Country Squire rolls off the tongue easier, and sounds more genteel, than does, say, Knights Templar.
Forget the scurrilous rumor about Ford’s mother being of Belgian descent. While true, that’s just a distraction. Upon her parents demise she was adopted by a family named O’Herns; that name doesn’t sound overly Belgian, does it?
Mercury itself had some other terrific wagon names.
Let’s start with “Voyager”. Unfortunately many of us, primarily those born in the most awesome 1970s and afterwards, automatically associate that name with a Plymouth minivan.
For those who possess more life experience, there is yet another Voyager of near unicorn status – it was a full-size van with a Plymouth nameplate.
Another alluring Mercury wagon name was the ever so plain yet descriptive “Commuter”.
While many might scoff at the notion one would even consider commuting to work in one of these full-size big-boned buxom beauties, be careful. These only weighed around 4,000 pounds, about the same or less than a new Taurus. Naming this wagon “Commuter” is proof of truth in advertising.
If one peruses elsewhere in the 1963 Mercury line, they will find a midsize wagon possessing a name with a certain auditory allure – Country Cruiser. Yes, it sounds a little Oldsmobile-y but wouldn’t “Country Cruiser” make a fabulous trim designation on a new F-150 with a suspension lift and running some big, honking knobby tires while equipped with everything except a butt-wiper? That’s a sales hit waiting to happen.
So this excursion (another fantastic Ford name) of taking an expedition into the history of Ford wagon names brings us back to Colony Park. We at CC are nothing if not explorers of automotive history. Once the automotive bug has hit, you can’t escape.
Can’t you see the monied neighborhood? Tall, two story brick and stone houses on large plots that aren’t too close but not overly separated. Circular driveways in the front, with each house having immaculate landscaping and large, wooden front doors. Setbacks from the street of around 100 feet. A large, stately red and white wagon with an intoxicating burble from its 390 V8 slowly eases into the driveway, bringing cultured ladies over for a game of bridge or well dressed gentlemen over for scotch and cigars. A butler is waiting at the curb to open doors for the passengers.
The name of the settlement has a stately air about it – Colony Park. A high dollar subdivision with a colonial theme. Everything is restrained and in good taste.
That’s Colony Park. This upscale demeanor could only be captured by a Mercury, the Ford with added panache or the Lincoln for the non-showy, old money set. Colony Park says it all.
So what’s in a name? Everything.
Found at Country Classic Cars in Staunton, Illinois, during the 2018 CC Meet up
Related reading:
1962 Mercury by JPC
1963 Marauder S-55 convertible by JS
1963 Marauder two-door hardtop by JS
1963 Monterey Breezeway by DougD
I remember this one – didn’t we discuss how it would make a perfect complement to your Galaxie?
I love this, but does it have the smallest tires ever fitted to a car of this size? And that early 60s Ford red paint has never called my name.
I feel your pain on the multiplicity of similar cars coming your way. I have the problem with Studebakers right now – I have written up too many of them as it is, and they just keep finding me. I have at least three that need to be featured, but I have to ration myself on them.
BTW, one nit – the low end Ford Wagon was the Ranch Wagon. I always wondered why they couldn’t come up with another Country Something to keep the name concept consistent. Country Bumpkin? Country Crock? Country Air? And as far as Colony Park goes, that is the name of a trailer park in Indianapolis.
There is no room at Shafer Estate for yet another vehicle. Four is pushing it as it is.
The tires and wheels on this wagon keep screaming at me. They are undersized from the factory undersized wheel/tire combo. Perhaps some even skinnier tires that are much lower profile. The car looks like it’s on ice skates given the dinky-ness of the tires.
Doh, forgot about Ranch Wagon. It does sound better than Country Sedan.
I’m going to guess it’s the same problem I ran into with my Chrysler. The factory setup was a relatively small wheel fitted with bias ply tires with very tall sidewalls. In my case a “28 diameter tire on a “14 wheel. There’s just no good way to duplicate that with a modern radial, so I finally switched to “15 wheels.
I’m curious what’s on the Galaxie?
205/70R14 tires on the factory wheels. They do get a bit small in there but it is the closest to the original F78-14 I could find. I think that’s the original size, goodness knows I researched it enough at the time.
The Country Sedan was the base trim full size Ford wagon from 1962-64 – the Ranch Wagon name migrated to the intermediate Fairlane for those three years.
Actually, the Ranch wagon was still full-sized in’62 as the new for ‘62 Fairlane series did not feature wagons. Fairlane wagons appeared in 1963.
You’re correct about the Ranch Wagon. However, in 1963 (and maybe 1964) the Ranch Wagon name was moved to the intermediate Fairlane/Fairlane 500 platform. The Fairlane series wagons were Ranch, Custom Ranch and Squire.
Your “Country Bumpkin” comment made me laugh out loud! It does make one wonder how branding and naming decisions were made at the time.
I’ll settle it right now, for those to whom it wasn’t apparent. Miss Kitty was a Madam who ran her business under the knowing eyes and acquiescence of Matt Dillon. I will let the reader speculate privately as to the manner and type of compensation he received for his cooperation.
Gunsmoke, being a family friendly show despite depicting sanitized deaths via Colt Peacemaker in almost every episode, wouldn’t have dared show her stable of younger girls in the act of soliciting customers in the saloon. Perhaps this is why Festus never married?
Why the digression? Because the Colony Park would have been the kind of car Miss Kitty would have driven had she been in 1963. She wouldn’t have dared drive something as pedestrian as a Ford, not with her taste in clothes, hairstyling and the well-bred horse pictured below. The Mercury was comfortable, not as flashy as a Cadillac and able to transport the various sundries and new talent needed for her high-turnover business and to haul a load of bedding to the local laundry. Quasi-legal brothels still existed out West into the 80s in towns such as Wallace, Idaho, so the Colony Park would have fit right in.
I was imagining Colony Park as a subdivision built in the 1955-63 era whose entrance sign, now long since replaced by a standard MUTCD white-on-green reflective street sign, featured the only “colonial” touches in a neighborhood of ranch houses and split-levels as long and low-slung as this wagon. Somehow the houses look barely taller than the Escapes, Foresters and the like inevitably parked in front of them now.
Amusingly, there’s a Colony Park subdivision near me in Fairfax, Virginia, but it’s a townhouse development built in the early 1980s.
Kind of its own version of name debasement… after “Colony Park” had run its course on 1950s-era colonial subdivisions with white-picket entrance signs, the name was appropriated by second-tier real estate developments, such as this mid-range townhouse community.
And of course at the same time, the Mercury Colony Park was a shadow of its former self, quickly on the way to becoming obsolete.
Below is one of the original ads from the Colony Park townhouses — “A little bit of the country preserved just for you…”
Ha! I just found out there’s a “Colony Park” neighborhood near me too. I never even knew it existed, I just found it on Google. My imaginary “Colony Park” neighborhood was actually based on another older neighborhood near me called “New England Acres”.
Colony Park – what the British called much of the globe for about 300 years.
Oddly enough, for me it sounds not at all upmarket, but more like a thinly-educated marketer’s name for a McMansion subdivision. (It’s noun-noun: the adjective-noun Colonial Park works, but then it does admittedly sound as if one would be piloting a large green space about).
Safari is my favourite, being broad enough to include handsome RWD monster-engine auto trans BOF 8seater quarter-acre-sized Pontiacs, and weirdy aero spaceframe front-mid-engined FWD manual 4cylinder hydraulically suspended 8 seater Citroen wagons.
(And for a tiny detour of CC arcana, Chrylser somehow cadged the safari name in Oz, and Valiant wagons were badged accordingly).
What’s this? An article about a Mercury with all sorts of CCs in the background – a Packard I believe, a 50s Caddy, and I thought I saw an Olds and other classic makes. The inclusion of a 70s Plymouth Voyager van makes this one a classic unto itself.
Great writing, and such tempting photography.
Not to mention a green 56 Lincoln sedan which caught my eye.
This was discovered at Country Classic Cars in Staunton, IL at the Midwest Meetup last summer. I believe I can see JPC and myself lurking in one of the backgrounds as well…
I’m particularly taken with the D-series Club Cab.
Colony Park – sounds like a neighborhood built in the 60s or 70s with huge acre yards and lots of mature trees everywhere. The houses look like this:
Or this:
Or THIS:
Who ever said “Yeah, I want this house” to the builders? Hideous, I say!
The virtual twin of this house is about two blocks from where I live. My house is in a subdivision that dates back to the late nineties but some of the other developments in this area are older, early to mid sixties. The builder responsible for these older houses was my in-laws next door neighbor, although they had moved on by the time my wife and I met. This home builder was responsible for hundreds of houses here from the fifties on into the seventies. Some of the designs they used were “quirky”, to say the least, but at least you can’t accuse them of being cookie cutter designs. Other than the occasional Grand Marquis (nearly always painted silver) I can’t recall the last time I saw a Mercury in the wild.
Oh and I forgot these:
Perhaps you may have seen a Mercury Colony Park parked in a Colony Park neighborhood back in the day, but that is unlikely now. (I will say though, you are more likely to find a CC in one of these older neighborhoods.)
The second paragraph and the word pictures you paint are awesome! Toyota has used the Commuter name on the passenger version of its HiAce van from the time they introduced it; didn’t know Mercury had used the name on a station wagon previously.
Jason – and Mercury Montego Villager; Mercury Cougar Villager.
Knew a family when I was a teen that has been well described here. New Colony Park wagon every couple of years. Cougar coupes for the girls when they got their driving license. And their home looked like the ones suggested above.
I’ve never received a valid explanation why something that was very clearly NOT a sedan was called a Country Sedan.
It’s kind of like jumbo shrimp. Break out the cocktail sauce and enjoy them and don’t think about it.
Then there’s the whole Saloon thing Jason points out.
Before discovering this place on the interwebs, I’d never heard that term for Sedan. (You learn so much here at CC.)
My first thoughts upon hearing the word “Saloon” is that it is a place wherein you drink copious amounts of whiskey, try not to get shot, and before long, someone goes through the big window in the front.
ALL of these things should NOT be associated with driving.
“Come in and get stiff”
And both the British definition of saloon (a car), and the American definition (a bar) derive from the French word salon, meaning a fancy large room or hall.
Then I have to wonder whether the American term “saloon” was really as widely used in the Old West as we think, or whether the term was more popularized by Hollywood? I have no idea.
So how/why did the British turn a word meaning ‘a fancy large room’ into a word meaning ‘a closed car of indeterminate size and quality, but definitely not hall-sized’? Interesting…
Then again, in some countries the ‘salón’ is….the living room. And with a good couch, your Ford Country Sedan will be your proverbial living room on wheels.
I’m gonna jump in and posit that back in ’56 (for the ’57 debut) it was named for the Colony Park area of Berks County, PA—though I can’t find any Mercury literature or publicity that proclaims that.
The whole history of Detroit naming cars/trucks for cities/locales is a rich one, worth several CC’s, right?
With what I know of Berks County–especially what it represented in the mid-1950s (when US population tilted more northeastern)—I can see a snazzy, hardtop-styled, (fake) wood-paneled station wagon as a good match-up. I’ll bet our CP would have fit right in the locale’s newest housing developments, something this 1959 shot (of the 1960 model):
Aha—-here’s the actual shot used in the 1960 ad–I see we’ve got a doorman, hence a business establishment:
Bel Air, Del Rey, Biscayne, Monza, Cambridge, Cranbrook, Belvedere, Fairlane, Monaco, Capri, Colony Park, Versailles, Bermuda, Newport, New Yorker, Sebring, Catalina, Bonneville, Catalina, Riviera, Calais,Seville, and Bavaria come to mind. Any others?
Wow–nice list! Park Avenue and Firenza come to mind, and then of course the truck names (Cheyenne, Durango, etc.).
Also don’t forget Monte Carlo and Torino for the category of “exotic European locales where you’d never find a bloated Detroit landyacht”.
If we go into trucks and SUVs, there’s a veritable smorgasbord of names, mostly in the western US.
Gunsmoke was an adult western, first broadcast on the radio. Even after it began to be cleaned up for television, years after it started on the radio, Gunsmoke was an adult western – it was never the corn-ball family show that Bonanza was. It outlasted Bonanza. Gunsmoke was always an unglamorous Western filled with dust, sweat, blood, violence, booze and hookers. The television show toned it down.
Miss Kitty was a soiled dove during the radio show years, and the 30 minute television b/w episodes weren’t able to be so open about it. Yet, the radio fans demanded that the television show be as authentic as the show was on radio. Gunsmoke was on the radio before the television show, and even five years after the television show debuted. Devoted radio fans mocked the cleaned up version of the television show, and wanted the original radio voices to be on television. The writers had to walk a fine line between their old fans, and new television fans. We see Miss Kitty walking down stairs from the brothel rooms with Matt during the early television years, to pacify the radio devotees, but nothing was said. Within a few years, you no longer saw Miss Kitty descending the stairs. Other girls did, but not her. There is no reason to believe Miss Kitty was a Madam. She didn’t pimp. She ran the saloon.
Miss Kitty ended up being written in as a business partner of the Longbranch Saloon, and the show at the time, so noted this, to end the debate over her past. From there, she became the owner – the first woman business owner on television, as a matter of fact.
The Doc was another character cleaned up for the television show from radio days. He used to be a cynical quack only interested in getting paid for his services and he was someone you only saw if you had no other hope. Television required that he get respect, so they changed his character too.
As to this Mercury, it looks too much like a Ford, and the Ford looked better. I like Mercury products, but there were times that the Fords were just better.
Also note the rear end update of this vehicle, from the previous year. Mercury squared up the rear end design, putting the tail lights into the horizontal strip across the back. The 1962, had those two little sloping bullet shaped tail lights that were located too far from the rear of the car – causing the rear end of the car to look like it was puckering and melting down into the bumper. This was a better design – yet – Ford looked better.
One thing about “Gunsmoke” that always left me wondering was why was Doc’s office on the second floor? Every injured or sick person had to be carried up those stairs. Luckily Matt Dylan usually only got flesh wounds in a gun fight. He would have been a tough one to get up there. No wonder Dodge City had such a reputation.
I always thought the Colony Park was named after Malibu Colony Park, Malibu Colony being LA’s most expensive community. Apt as it’s based on the Monterey.
That said, the Pontiac Safari is easily the better much much better looking wagon.
And so was the Country Sedan for that matter. The Mercury was so unfortunate-looking.
Seems a little insensitive to name a product “Colony” and paint it red. :^)
In general a more muted color would see to be more appropriate.
That Commuter has a lovely non-busy rear end and color, comparatively.
BTW, Jason, I’d like to nominate you for the CC Tom McCahill Colorful Prose Award…always makes your columns (Mercury or otherwise) that much more entertaining!
Thank you. I have to be in the right mood and most of this was written about ten months ago. I had forgotten about it!
“I had forgotten about it”
As everyone else had done with the 63 Mercury by 1964. 🙂
Colony Park always sounded like a fancy subdivision but the reality is a humble apartment complex http://www.colonyparkcr.com/.
Apparently that image didn’t always work because our family friends who lived in a very upscale suburb drove a Country Squire. Consequently my sole encounter with a Mercury Colony Park was an 80s Panther platform which was most memorable for the difficulty of releasing the parking brake with the column shift, a “convenience” feature that released it when you shifted out of park and was so much less effective than the plebian pull handles on the Econoline and F-350
I think you lost your Focus here: “So this excursion (another fantastic Ford name) of taking an expedition into the history of Ford wagon names brings us back to Colony Park. We at CC are nothing if not explorers of automotive history. Once the automotive bug has hit, you can’t escape.”
I’m a Maverick in my presentation style!
“many might scoff at the notion one would even consider commuting to work in one of these full-size big-boned buxom beauties”
I know I’m far outside the norm for my age group, but I commute in a Grand Marquis now; a ’60s Colony Park would be a delight for summertime commuting. Would turn way more heads than the plethora of black and silver Audis and BMWs my colleagues drive.
Great write up Jason! I must say you raise an excellent point that FordMoCo was arguably better at naming their wagons than GM.
Our next door neighbor when we lived in Burlington (moved there in ’65) was a Mercury family….they first had a Comet, probably a ’63 or ’64, and then in ’68, they bought a Colony Park Wagon. Funny thing is that I’m pretty sure they had a large vehicle before they bought the ’68 Wagon, but I don’t remember what it was. They had 4 boys, 2 of them older than I and 2 younger…my best friend was the next to the youngest, so I got to ride in the Colony Park more than a few times. They also belonged to the Mallets Bay boat club, and had a small motor boat they pulled with the Colony Park.
As for us, we started with a ’65 Olds F85 wagon (bought after my father was in an accident with our ’63 Rambler wagon, right when we were moving up from Catonsville MD. We stayed a 1 car family until maybe 1966 when my Dad bought a used ’59 Beetle, which got totalled around 1968 when he bought the rarest car he owned, a ’68 Renault R10. From that point we stayed a 2 car family (up until 2005 or so when my sister moved in with my Parents and shared my Mother’s 1988 Tempo…and later ’09 Focus, which she took over after my Father stopped driving. We became a Ford family in 1969 when my Dad bought a ’69 Country Squire (first full sized wagon in our family).
Much later Dad moved over to Mercury in a big way when he bought 3 Sables all in a row (’89, ’94, and ’96).