Is it better to buy a fancy version of a cheap car or a cheap version of a fancy car? Here we have a beguilingly plain survivor that urges you to consider the latter. We’ll take a look at this uncommon sedan and later I’ll try to answer that question as well as compare the Monterey to its contemporary competition.
Our subject car is a Monterey, which if you were shopping for Mercurys in 1965, meant the bottom of three full-sized series. Monterey wasn’t always the cheapest Mercury. The Monterey name was first used on a special 1950 model made to compete with the new pillarless hardtop coupes available from GM and Chrysler. Mercury hoped to confuse people about why a “hardtop convertible” had gotten that name. It could mean a fabric top instead of pillarless windows, right? This legerdemain would have to do until Mercury could develop a true hardtop for 1952 (though the stopgap solution actually sold pretty well).
1952. Unusual combo of drawings and photography in these Mercury ads
Monterey would serve as the flagship model in all body styles from 1952-54, then get demoted to midlevel model from 1955-56, down to entry level in 1957-60, back to top level in 1961-63, then dropped once again to entry level from 1964-1974. Confused yet?
Fancifully exaggerated proportions not standard equipment
I would imagine customers, as well, were pretty confused at the time. What Mercury hoped was clear, though, was that Mercury was the affordable car built “in the Lincoln Continental tradition.” That was their latest ad theme for 1965 and meant to be inclusive of all big Mercurys, no matter the model or trim level even though most of the advertising featured the top Park Lane models like the one above.
To emphasize this idea, Mercury seems to have quite intentionally given the Mercury a very similar grille to the Lincoln. The tail treatment is somewhat similar, too (compare with the picture below). Mechanically and platform-wise Mercurys were still Fords, both division’s full-sizers getting a new body and chassis for 1965 with new suspension design in the front and coil springs in the rear for the first time (not in the Lincoln Continental tradition!)
The rear is overall cribbed from the Lincoln, except for the taillights. Those remind me a bit of the 63-64 Cadillac.
The marketing folks wanted you to think upscale, even on the base Monterey as seen in the vacation resort brochure scene above. Looks pretty upscale to me!
In the real world, maybe not so much. Perhaps the reason for looking so downscale here, besides almost six decades of age, is that the Monterey I encountered is not only the lowest model line but also a completely base car. I haven’t spotted anything optional on this car, with the exception of newer whitewall tires which provide the thinnest of lingerie on this stripper (and she may not have even worn that from the factory). Full wheel covers were an option.
Check out the Spartan accommodations (by modern standards, at least). Carpet and heater were standard, but the blank plate indicates no optional radio. The original owner considered vent windows adequate air conditioning, even in Texas. Three-speed manual transmission will get you where you need to go. There can’t be many surviving full-sized 65 Mercurys with that!
What did a buyer get in a base Monterey that might justify the premium over a Ford or other low-priced brand? For one thing he got a large car with a 123 inch wheelbase no matter which full-size model was chosen (except for wagons, which got the same 119 inch wheelbase as all full-size Fords).
How does that compare to the cheapest full-size four-door sedans from other medium-price makes? Oldsmobile and Buick had the same wheelbase, while Pontiac and Dodge had 121 inches. All had similarly minimal standard equipment levels.
Interior space was quite roomy but no more so than a big Ford since the extra wheelbase length was all behind the rear seat. But the trunk was a bit longer.
Monterey also gave the buyer a 250hp 378lb-ft 390c.i. FE V8 standard. Fords naturally came with a six standard and getting a 390 would be a $246 option. This is an internet photo, as I was not able to pop the hood on the curbside car and don’t know if it had the optional power brakes or steering. Based on the rest of the car, I’d bet it doesn’t.
Oldsmobile came with a 260hp 330c.i. V8 (60c.i. smaller) and cost $156 more. Buick came with a 210hp 300c.i.V8 (90c.i. smaller) and cost $166 more. Pontiac and Dodge came with engines similar to Mercury and cost $30 less, but remember they had a two inch shorter wheelbase (256hp 389c.i. in Pontiac, 270hp 383c.i. in Dodge).
I found this car in Burton, Texas, approximately 15 miles from what I presume to be the dealer that first sold it. I couldn’t find any online reference to Rankin Motors, so I couldn’t confirm if was a Mercury dealer in 1965. The pictures make it seem like this is a curbside find, and was in the literal sense, but actually it was displayed as part of the annual Burton Cotton Gin Festival which includes a small car show among other attractions. The Mercury was said to have 23k miles with no other history given and I unfortunately did not see an owner nearby.
The paint, body, and interior look untouched to me. Not immaculate, but who is at 59 years of age? It’s sometimes said that black is the absence of color, but I would submit that a lightly faded 60’s beige is the real absence of color.
It seems that a Mercury Monterey was a reasonable value compared to the other medium-priced brands, but what about the opening question: is a base Mercury a better choice than a top-model Ford? 1965 happened to be the first year for Ford’s LTD, a landmark car that started 10-15 years of “luxury” replacing “sporty” as the dominant trend in popular cars. The Monterey stickered at $2782 with no options, while the LTD started at $3245 for the 4-door [hardtop], $463 more than the Monterey. LTD came with an automatic and V8, but only a 200hp 289. A 390 would cost you an extra $137 and things like AC, vinyl roof, and power brakes, steering, windows, etc. were still extra cost.
The choice would have come down to what you valued most. Size was status in the 1960s. If you wanted the extra size that came with the Merc, even with the $190 Merc-O-Matic tranny, a Monterey was $273 less than an LTD. If the pillarless body was important to you, a Monterey hardtop sedan with auto was still $137 less. If the LTD’s extra chrome trim or nicer upholstery were important to you, you might have done well to step up to the Montclair hardtop with auto, which would cost only $90 more than an LTD.
Personally, I would have gone with either the Monterey or the Montclair over any higher level Ford. In real estate the saying goes, “it’s better to have the cheapest house on a nice block than the nicest house on a cheap block.” The same logic applies with cars, and I’d rather have the less common Merc than the ubiquitous Ford.
photographed in Burton, Texas April 20, 2024
related reading:
Curbside Classic: 1965 Ford LTD – It Launched The Great Brougham Epoch by PN
Curbside Classic: 1973 Mercury Monterey Custom – A Great Name’s Last Ride By J P Cavanaugh
Nice find, nice pix. I’m always fascinated by mid-priced cars without the trimmings. Most mid-priced brands continued offering manual into the 60s, even though buyers were already gone in the 50s. For instance, only 3% of ’57 Dodges had manual, but Dodge kept offering it for another 10 years.
Thanks! I’m surprised Dodge was already at 3% for manuals in 57.
I love strippo cars (and unloved humans and cats)
I remember dealers ordering one (1) zero option car to put in a newspaper ad, to bring people to their door.
From my experience with similar Fords, if this did not have power steering I think it would have had a different (thicker) steering wheel.
Also not to be critical but the unibody Conti and T-Birds had leaf springs. Cost or to spread the load stresses?
Not sure
It’s hard to imagine this car without power steering, but there must have been at least a few made that way. I should look into that steering wheel factor.
Good catch on the suspension. I should have remembered that! I corrected the article.
A favorite bait at the Nissan dealership I sold for in 2003. And of course the sales people, being front-line, had to deal with disgusted shoppers who demanded to buy one at that low price. “Gee, I guess we just sold that one.”
Jon, your research into prices and options makes this article a good piece of history. As for the total essay, love it. Relatives’ relatives of mine were an older couple who had the next level up two-door hardtop. It had a few options including power brakes and steering. The grandchildren loved driving it because it would accelerate rapidly.
Thanks! A Montclair coupe would be a really cool car to have.
Love the boxy design compared to today’s jelly bean look.
Could hold an entire Little League baseball team with room to spare.
A smaller V8 would have left money for an automatic and upgraded interior.
Still, a great study in “Less is More!”
A fantastic find. Somewhere I have a Standard Catalog or some such that presents the take rate for manual transmissions during some model years. If memory serves, the take rate for manual transmissions in a Mercury (which would also include the 4 speeds in the higher trimmed cars) was 2% or less…I’m guessing less. This would be a fun car to drive.
To me, the value proposition of this Mercury would be to option a Ford as close to identical as possible, then see what the difference in outlay would be.
The Monterey name is another great example of name debasement coming from Detroit.
I’d be interested in that stat! It’s amazing they still bothered tooling up a manual version of these cars. Either they were really dedicated to giving the minority of customers a choice or they felt it served their marketing well to have a base transmission that (almost) nobody wanted.
Looking into the details of these cars, I was surprised that the base equipment level on the medium priced brands was not much different than the low priced brands, and options cost about the same. Styling, size, and engine were the main thing you got for the extra money. A Ford Custom 500 V8 (one up from the basest model and the most equivalent to Monterey) was $2573, or $209 difference.
The Monterey did suffer name debasement, but it was more of a roller coaster than most other examples. After being demoted, it got promoted again before being re-demoted.
Often not thought of today but cars like this with a manual transmission were favored by many people who towed. The take rate might not have been high but it didn’t hurt their image to be seen towing horse trailers or campers or other expensive pursuits.
Automotive Industries included statistics on option equipment take rates in the ’60s. For the full-size Mercury in 1965, they said 0.3 percent had a four-speed manual, 2.6 had a three-speed manual, and 97.1 percent had automatic.
(This did NOT include Comet, which was much more frequently ordered with manual transmission. Automatic take rate for 1965 was 65.5 percent, with an additional 7.5 percent of buyers order a four-speed stick.)
The Monterey name is another great example of name debasement coming from Detroit.
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The debasement got even worse with the name Monterey getting tacked on to a mini-van.
IMO
I chose not to even mention that unfortunate use of the Monterey name…best forgotten.
Fantastic find and writeup! Some of the little details here are amazing, such as the dash plate covering the radio. At no time in the last 60 years did anyone think “Hmm… I should add a radio to the Mercury…”
I wonder if this car was a loss leader example to get customers into the showroom with a low price, or if someone custom-ordered the car to these exact specifications?
And regarding Rankin Motors, looks like it was a Mercury franchise (as well as Ford). I think the dealership persisted as a Ford-Mercury dealer, though under different names, until the early 2000s.
Nice job finding that! I looked, but my internet sleuthing abilities are not so impressive.
From the time these came out when I was a little kid, I always found the 65 Mercury’s styling to be clumsy, especially in the detailing. The bumper and taillight treatment probably looked great in the drawings, but looked like a Cuban fabrication in real life. The too-tall marker lights in front looked off in relationship to everything else around them. And the dash was the crudest design since the 1958 Studebaker.
If you thought the 65 Galaxie wasn’t angular enough, well here was your car. Mercury fixed the kludgy details on the 66, and got the Cadillac-style taillights right in 67-68.
But all that said, I love this car. A low-mile, original strippo is a rare and beautiful thing in an old car. And what better color than this old man beige. I am trying to remember the newest full-sized car I can remember in person that came with a column-shifted 3 speed – the best I can do is a 68 Chevy sedan driven by a guy I worked with at a job in the late 1970’s. But the newest that was not in the Ford-Chevy-Plymouth class? That’s a good question.
I’ve mentioned it a few times here before but when I was a car jockey at a Ford dealer in 1971, I had to drive a service customer’s car up to the rooftop parking lot. It was a ’69 LTD with the optional 390 V8, three on the tree and…manual steering. I couldn’t believe it. I assumed the ps pump was out because it was such a bear to get up the ramp and into the lot. I popped the hood to check…no ps pump.
The customer was a tough and grizzled old timer. He ordered it just the way he wanted it. And I’m sure the same applies to the guy who ordered this Merc.
If my memory serves me right, the California Highway Patrol had 1970 Montereys which also had no power steering. I guess that’d be OK for highway driving.
I knew about the 70 Montereys, but I didn’t know they had manual steering. IIRC CHP had a requirement that steering wheels had to be white. Was that in place on those Mercs?
Another great survivor .
I’d rock this as is .
It’s far too big for me but what style and presence .
-Nate
The strangest up-market stripper in my experience was the 1964 Oldsmobile 98 that my great uncle, Frank, custom ordered with no power windows, no radio, and NO air conditioning even though he lived in Houston, Texas.
Uncle Frank owned a furniture store that was only a few blocks from his house so it is understandable that he might eschew the radio but I cannot imagine traveling any distance around the gulf coast with no AC. Even my mother’s 1963 Chevy II had an underdash unit that was rudimentary but effective.
The depression was in full force when Uncle Frank was a young man and he obviously did not grow up with air conditioning in Louisiana so perhaps he was “acclimated.” He was also very frugal but might have been cognizant of the image his mode of transportation parked in front of his store projected as a successful but prudent businessman (as long as no one looked through the window and noticed the blank off plate where the radio would have been).
Chevrolet: doesn’t indicate success – Cadillac: too ostentatious
Interesting story about the 98. You wouldn’t think someone buying that fancy of a car would want it so stripped, but your uncle’s example makes sense for where he came from. It’s amazing to me that even on Old’s flagship model, there was no standard radio.
I do remember people (my grandparents age) who grew up poor in the depression could be quite miserly when they were older. Even if they had a decent amount of money later in life, they could be selectively frugal in surprising areas.
The older I get the more I want light up a smoke (I quit 40 years ago) and drive a car like this, what the hell is wrong with me.
Now that you mention it, this car makes me want to crack the vent window and light up too! I’m right behind you, quit almost 35 years ago.
I love front quarter vents, its summer here and I am daily driving my 66 Hillman estate no AC or pwr steer but the vent windows and floor vent open its not too hot in it and I can drive it one handed unless parking, I drove Bedford trucks years without pwr steer, now that was a daily workout.
This car strikes me as being most appropriately driven while smoking a cigar. Though that would require a fair amount of coordination while rowing the gears in this car.
I owned a ’73 Vette convertible with a 4-speed manual for many years. I raced it extensively in NCCC club solo racing from parking lots to places like Gratton Raceway and Michigan International Race Track. I always smoked a cigar as I did my runs. I also won my class 70% of the time. Great fun!
With the “three on the tree”, that would be a “fete”. Perhaps on the highway.
Gosh, this is a tough one to call…
I can’t imagine a dealer of mid-priced cars would order this for the lot. Not even as a bait-and-switch car. They weren’t in the business of selling cheap cars.
I also can’t imagine someone who would order this. You’re not going to impress the neighbors by driving a “fancy car” with dog dish hubcaps – it would be a dead giveaway in 1965.
And if Rankin Motors was actually a F-L-M dealer, as Eric703 suggests, that would make them even less inclined to order a stripped Mercury for the lot.
I just can’t make sense of this.
The guy who ordered it grew up in the wilds of Texas driving jalopy Model Ts on the ranch as a kid and Model As as a young man. And he eventually fell for a ’39 Mercury when he could afford his first new car. Hot rodded it some. Became a Mercury man. Bought a ’49 after the war. Warmed up the flathead with triple carbs. Drove it forever, but finally sprung for a new ’65, ordered just the way he liked his cars: very basic. No frills. Just the thing to bomb down the endless rural roads of Texas. But he got lung cancer from his 2 pack a day habit and had to put it away in the garage after just two years.
He couldn’t give a flying f*ck about impressing his neighbors.
I do like your imagined original owner! He’s colorful and interesting.
Size was status in the 1960s….“it’s better to have the cheapest house on a nice block than the nicest house on a cheap block.” The same logic applies with cars,
I beg to differ; it didn’t work that way with cars. The perfect example of that is the Corvair Monza. It was so popular precisely because one could buy a well-trimmed bucket-seat Monza for about the same price as a low-end big Chevy Biscayne. Guess which one had more eye-appeal and image value?
And then came the Mustang. Which had more appeal, image and cool factor: a Mustang or a stripper big Mercury? The answer is of course totally obvious.
I suspect you’re a bit younger than me and weren’t around in the ’60s. I can assure you that this stripper Merc had essentially zero prestige value. Everyone saw it for what it was: a cheap Ford with a different skin, owned by the old skinflint down the street. Zero prestige value. Mercury as a brand had very low prestige value in the early-mid ’60s anyway, and this stripper had none. An LTD had a hundred times more.
This was ordered by that gruff old guy who grew up driving Model T jalopies and such on the back roads of Texas and became a Mercury guy along the way. probably had a hotted up ’39 or ’49 in the past. And he had zero interest in trying to impress anyone.
You’re right, I was born after the 60’s, so I wasn’t around to experience attitudes of the time. Wouldn’t attitudes have a lot to do with people’s age? I would think that what people your age at the time considered prestigious was not necessarily the same thing that the type of older people who bought Mercury sedans considered upscale. The appeal, image and cool factor of smaller sporty cars was probably lost on many of them.
Wasn’t the rule of thumb from the 20’s through at least the 60’s that the more expensive the car, the larger it was? Therefore, a larger car implied a certain amount of status. My impression is that rule started being eroded by upscale imports and by the quest of U.S. makers to appeal to baby boomer car buyers (like with the cars you mentioned).
I do understand your point that any individual who’s choices were driven by status was not buying a base Monterey with poverty caps. I imagine there were other reasons for buying a larger car like that, like having a roomy interior for family trips or the towing considerations mentioned by others.
Wasn’t the rule of thumb from the 20’s through at least the 60’s that the more expensive the car, the larger it was?
Yes and no. There were always some exceptions to that. A swb Duesenberg roadster had it all over a lwb Dodge 9-passenger sedan. Car sizes in the pre-war eras were in part related to their function.
And the high end “prestige” brands used to build very basic utilitarian sedans used for commercial uses of one kind of another. A top-tier Buick (or other brand) convertible was clearly much higher on the pecking order than a longer Cadillac commercial sedan.
My point is that “prestige” wasn’t strictly related to either brands or size. Keep in mind that for instance Cadillacs back in the 1910s were making their reputation on superior quality, reliability and functionality over the established luxury brands back then (Packard, Locomobile, Pierce-Arrow) despite being significantly smaller and lighter.
Yes, to the extent this relationship did exist, it clearly crumbled after the war. The vastly more expensive Continental Mk II was shorter than the cheaper Lincolns and Cadillacs. And the even more expensive Cadillac Eldorado Brougham was shorter than the cheaper regular Cadillacs. Those two were the epitome of expensive and prestigious American cars. They showed that length was not everything, since all the cars, including the low priced ones were getting so much longer. That’s what upset that equation: low priced cars getting longer and longer. And that’s what started the revolt against that by consumers in 1957 against that trend.
Let’s just be clear: the Mercury’s interior was not even slightly larger than a full-sized Ford’s. They shared the same body shell. I had to edit your post because you clearly stated that the Mercury had more interior room due to its larger wheelbase. Not so. Only the trunk was a bit longer. And that had zero impact on its towing abilities. In fact, a longer rear overhang is a definite negative to towing, FWIW.
The point I was trying to drive home is that nobody in 1965 actually thought this was a “classy” car. Everyone knew better. And Mercury’s image at that time was pretty much rock-bottom. Yes, Mercury sales improved a bit in the ’70s but that was mostly thanks to the Cougar and the fact that there was a general movement towards mid-priced brands. And Mercury eventually stopped offering stripper big sedans like this. Doing so only hurt the brand’s image, and they finally figured that out.
The Dodge 383 in 65 was 270hp, it was dropped from 305 in 65 due to a compression drop.
Thanks, I don’t know where the 250 figure came from. I’ve corrected it, as well as the Pontiac which I also somehow got wrong.
We had a few Colony Park Mercurys in the late 60s, and early 70s in the family. These were loaded models, so as a teenager I quite liked them. I can’t imagine going for the bare-bones model. Buying lightly used cars for cash has been my mantra. But didn’t folks have auto loans back then? Would adding a few niceties to the monthly payments have made such a significant difference?
I am intrigued by what Hard Boiled Eggs commented above re. there being a preference back then for cars with manual transmissions and non-powered steering as towing vehicles. I’m not able to easily find any online “facts” to back that contention up, but it is definitely something that I have heard.
What I do have is a car (the 1976 Volvo) that is configured just like this – manual and non-power steering – and that absolutely was done because the original owner was devoted to using the car for regularly towing some sort of trailer (a camper, I think). Of course, my car has an enormous factory tow hitch and towing/trailer mirrors…something that this Mercury is missing. But maybe this car was ordered up by the dealer for such a buyer, and instead found its way into the hands of the crusty old Texan skinflint that Paul describes.
I have heard that the thinking was that the armstrong steering gave “better road feel” and the manual transmission allowed for more precision in gear choice (useful going up and down grades?), avoided overheating automatic transmissions, and provided every available bit of horsepower when towing heavy loads. All of which may be more belief than fact…but I could see folks believing all of that and buying what would be a stripper car to fill those demands.
Oh, and the same case would be made for deleting the air conditioning (power sapping)…although a car like this without air conditioning may have been somewhat common anyway in 1965.
I do have to say that that’s one heck of a big car to be trying to park at the grocery store (even in 1965 even in Texas) without power steering.
Great find, Jon.
Neighbors with a Dodge Polara wagon constantly worried about overheating the transmission while trailer towing. I don’t know if it actually happened to them, but the Sears catalogues in the Seventies always sold accessory transmission oil coolers, and I believe the factories included a bigger automatic trans oil cooler with trailer towing packages. So there may have been a basis for the belief.
There were also people who just liked to shift their own gears, in addition to the skinflints Paul mentioned.
Back in highschool 74-76 I had a 65 Mercury Comet 404. AM radio was the only option. 3 in the tree.
In 2018 I ordered a new Jeep Wrangler Sport for retirement. The only options were Automatic, A/C, tinted glass. I had the dealer install running boards prior to delivery. I read the JL Jeep forums and everyone seems to have 60k loaded up Rubicons. 50 years from now people may wonder who ordered a stripped down Wrangler.
Cool! That Jeep sounds nice and appropriate for a Jeep. I’m amazed at how much people spend on Jeeps these days. I high school in the 80’s, my parents had an 84 CJ. 4 cylinder, manual, base steel wheels. Only option was a hardtop, as far as I know. I would have preferred it with a 6 cylinder, but I still think a real Jeeps have sticks.
Big “Merc” with a manual tranny! Sounds like a “49”, model lurking in “mid 60’s”, skin.
The debut of the Ford LTD was the point of no return for the survival of the medium price class of automobile brands. Already having lost superiority over low price class brands in performance, luxury was the final clear-cut distinction between the two classes until the LTD shattered that illusion.
I was thinking that, too, but I looked at sales numbers and if LTD and such cars killed the mid price brands, it took a long while. Mercury sales didn’t drop for the rest of the 60s and actually expanded quite a bit in the 70s. They did quite well until at least the late 80’s.
The medium price class differed from the classes below and above by its own hierarchy of multiple levels within. That was a weakness which became exposed with the LTD’s arrival in the marketplace.
Ford’s class-level competition were not willing to sit on their hands. Soon after the LTD arrived came the Chevrolet Caprice. And the ball kept rolling with Plymoth’s VIP and AMC’s DPL. All of these entries into the marketplace did their thing to help dissipate the notion that medium price brands were worthy of their higher prices.
What’s left within the traditional medium price class are now few. Buick is hanging in there, thank you China. Chrysler somehow is too. Dodge, they always seemed to play two parts as an upper level Plymouth and a truck brand.
In memoriam – DeSoto, Mercury, Pontiac, Oldsmobile……
Same with Chevy introducing the Caprice in ’65, too. Before that year, Detroit automakers persisted in delineated the brands into ‘low-priced’ (Chevy, Ford, Plymouth), ‘medium-priced’ (Pontiac, Olds, Mercury, Dodge, lower-line Buick and Chrysler), and ‘luxury-priced’ (Cadillac, Lincoln, Imperial/higher price Chrysler). Rare was a car from one class being priced into another class, low or high.
Against the pointlessly stretched (and oddly styled) Mercury, I’d much prefer the very attractive ’65 Ford. I used to own this same year of Galaxie 500 with the 390 4V and really liked it – except for the power drum brakes which were, to put it politely, inadequate!
For trivia the Australian-assembled Galaxie (R/H/D) used an instrument panel adapted from the Lincoln Continental.
Our domestic Fairlane for 1967 (ZA model) and ’68 (ZB, shown) featured similar ‘Lincolnesque’ design:
Wow, that Lincoln dash is a trip! Very interesting, though definitely has a cobbled-together look.
Lots of these full size strippers were “back road” cars in rural areas…better to have hub caps than trim rings/wheel covers that will go frisbee on dirt/gravel/narrow paved farm roads. Manual transmission with the high torque motors more dependable and more efficient(how many times are you gonna shift that 3sp flying down a country black top) than the day slush boxes. Burt Reynolds played a Deep South character named Gator McCluskey in a couple of moonshine runner movies in the late 60’s early 70’s. Their “runner” car of choice; 429cid/4sp full size Ford Custom 500 4dr sedans with dog dish steelies.
Manual tree shift cars were common here back then, Auto trans was special order and fully built import not local assembly, so you had to wait longer for delivery and the salt air on the boat trip usually meant early rust issues, Automatic trans got popular in the 70s on the Aussie cars Kiwis bought in decent numbers and you had to order a manual, I dont mind manual trans and in a lot of cars actually prefer it, currently I have the first automatic trans car that I actually looked for I owned a previous model prior in manual and it took me 3 months to fund it after deciding which car I wanted, that car is laid up at the mo waiting for a part to surface and I’m enjoying driving a manual everything car, lights wipers windows locking all require human imput no self leveling suspension ride height adjustment and loving it.
Here in Canada Mercury dealers also had the lower priced Meteors which were basically a Mercury with a Ford instrument panel and upholstery. The Rideau was like the Ford Custom, the Rideau 500 like the Custom 500 and the Montcalm like the Galaxie 500. The Monterey was not available in Canada as it would have been about the same price as a Montcalm. Engines in the Meteor were the 240 six and 352 and 390 V8s and there were a lot with six cylinders and no power steering or brakes, but manual transmissions were rare. In 1970 my father was looking for a new car and the local Chev-Olds dealer had a used 1968 Meteor Montcalm station wagon with a 390 V8 on their lot. Dad decided to take it for a test drive and the first thing he noticed was the clutch pedal, he declined to take it off the lot as he knew my mother wouldn’t drive a car without an automatic.
Interesting. I love those Canadian names. So Gallic!
I bought a new 1970 Monte Carlo as a first new car out of college. It was a 3 speed on the column, 350 V-8 with no air or power steering. Very fast car and good for 75 mph in 2nd gear. Used it for traveling on my job, getting 19 – 20 mpg.
Man, I’m surprised they offered those with manual steering. There can’t have been many made that way or with the three-on-the-tree. Pretty good gas mileage for the era. Your car was in “eco” mode before there was such a thing.
I think the key to this is by offering so little as standard ,manual steering & brakes etc the manufacturer got to charge the customer extra for what were considered standard features. The two-ish percent of cars with a manual box were in production terms awkward but they ensured ninty eight percent of customers paid extra for their transmission. An early form of drip charging perhaps.
My dad ordered a stripper Camaro from his local Chevy dealer in 1967. It has a 250 straight 6, Saginaw four-on-the-floor transmission, Capri Cream paint, dog dish hubcaps and no power anything. He still has it and it is all restored to original. It is a unicorn. All of its contemporaries have long since been turned into SS tributes and restomods. I love that he has kept it just like it was back in the day.
That is a great thing! Not many restored 6 cylinder Camaros out there, I’d love to see it. There was a CC article several years ago on a 6 cylinder 69 Camaro (I think).
The car has power steering, yes, but not power brakes. Unless my eyes are tricking me (no), you can see the p/s pump in the photo and no hydraulic booster thingy on the firewall for power brakes. So, that’s how it goes. If it were me back in the day, the car would be perfectly retail-able if they had just ordered the auto, power brakes, and an am radio, but they didn’t.. THAT is why the car survived so long. Nobody wanted it.
That’s true, though I got that photo off the internet, it’s not the actual car. I explained in the text under the photo that I didn’t have access to this car’s engine, unfortunately. That photo looks about like I figured this car would. I wouldn’t be surprised either way if it had PS. Seems crazy to buy such a car without it, but then all the other missing amenities seem crazy to me, too.
I’m a Oldsmobile man. Currently rebuilding a 67 Cutlass supreme holiday coupe. Switched out the engine and tranny with 350 v8 Goodwrench and a 700 r4 4 speed transmission. Four barrel Edelbrock. A 442 now….kinda.
You had me at “classy stripper”!
There was a hard top version of the Mercury Monterey available near me about a year ago. I’ve been kicking myself ever since for not grabbing it. I love overlooked survivors like this.
My Grandpa drove a 65 Mercury Monterey Tudor for a good long time when I was a kid. It had the options though. I didn’t know that Mercury offered a manual transmission that late. I always figured that marque to be mid luxury.
My parents must have had similar thoughts in 1969 when they made the quantum leap from a Plymouth Valiant to used Mercedes S Class. My mother said a used 250S and a new Plymouth were about the same price, so we rocked a poverty spec Benz for several years.