Earlier today, in the large, saltwater/Gatorade/10W-30-filled hot tub where all Autopian meetings are held (the Gatorade and oil somehow keep the saltwater from shorting out our Newton MessagePads that we use to make site content) we came to a realization: nobody talks about Mercurys. I mean, sure, part of that is because there haven’t been Mercurys built since 2011, but there are plenty of other dead brands that still have some sort of plot of real estate in our collective minds: Saab, Plymouth, King Midget, DKW, Iso – hell, we even ran something about Pontiac today. Fucking Pontiac! So why not Mercury? Why does everyone forget to remember Mercury? Well, we at The Autopian are in the business of solving shit, not whining about it like some baby made of angel food cake. So, with that, I’d like to introduce Mercury Monday!
Now, I get that the pool of forgotten yet worth-considering Mercurys isn’t huge, so I wouldn’t expect this to be a long-term thing, but at least we can say we did our part. And I want to start this one with a car that I think is generally forgotten, at least in the mainstream mind: the Mercury Cyclone.
The Cyclone was a muscle car, but when people think of Ford-made muscle cars, even many gearhead people, your list will be dominated by Mustangs, with maybe some Cobras thrown in, maybe even a Torino, and if you absolutely demand a Mercury, you’re going to get a Cougar. Sure, there are people out there who remember the Cyclone, but it’s proportionally a vole next to the bear that is the Mustang.
Specifically, I want to talk about the fourth-generation Cyclone, because it’s absolutely, over-the-top bonkers, and, if we’re honest, that’s exactly what a muscle car is all about. Yeah, sure, they go fast in straight lines and burn rubber and make noises that cause you to have complicated feelings in your bathing suit zone, but if you wanted speed and a rational design you’d get a GTI or something.
But you don’t, because you’re a hypothetical deadbeat muscle car owner who eats raw trouble-steaks for breakfast and washes it down with a bottle of 1600-proof danger-gin as you blast by office buildings and fix everyone you see with a look so full of raw, throbbing, humid sexuocity that you make everyone of every gender pregnant in the surrounding three blocks.
That’s who the Mercury Cyclone was for. I’ve actually talked about these before, because hot hams, people, just look at the fucking thing:
Come on. This car is all madness and purposeful aggression and yet somehow stylish, too. It’s got a flapjacking gunsight in the center of the grille, which is already forming a crazy-ass proboscis that juts out over a foot from the rest of the front of the car, flanked by a pair of vertically-oriented amber driving lights whose purpose must be to help blind you before you get smacked into nothingness by this wild juggernaut of libido and speed.
Sure, the Mustang Mach 1 is cool, but is it Cyclone Spoiler cool?
I’m not so sure it is, yet it’s the one that gets all the limelight. And it’s not like the Mustangs are really much different mechanically: The Cyclone is a Mustang sibling, packed with the same 429 V8 Cobra Jet engine (remember, that’s over seven liters) you could get in the Mach 1, and the Cyclone Spoiler (that “Spoiler” badge, right there under that little wing, often called a “spoiler” itself, is pleasingly confusing, like it’s a label for the part) also had a big-ass oil cooler and could be had with a locking differential.
Plus, look at all those taillights! Those look like the same units that came in fours on the backs of Mercury Comets, so I guess they just figured the Cyclones needed 50% more, because why not? 
If you wanted to convey that you were both an animal yet somehow refined, like a gorilla in a well-tailored Brooks Brothers suit, you could get the Cyclone GT, which was a bit more genteel. Even though, underneath, it was still all id-driven madness.
The Cyclone certainly earned its muscle car chops on the track, too, with the fourth-generation Cyclones I’m going on and on about here setting NASCAR records, like how the 1972 Daytona 500 lineup was made up of 30% Cyclones, or how the Woods Brothers’ 1971 Cyclone won 18 times out of 32 races.
Among people who know, there’s respect for the Cyclone. But overall, especially compared to the other muscley Fords, the Mercury is severely overshadowed. There are no songs about Cyclone Sally or movies with a custom Cyclone named Eleanor or modern versions of Cyclones running into lampposts after your local Cars and Coffee meetup ends.
Because it’s a Mercury, and everyone [Ed Note: Except Alan Jackson. -DT] forgets about Mercury.
But not us, and not today.
You can’t count me as one of those people who don’t think about Mercury with 4 in the driveway the question is sometimes which Mercury to drive, the family truckster Mountaineer, the Stock Marauder or the Modified Marauder. The 4th is the son’s Grand Marquis.
I read that gunsight grille as some alternate-universe feature where EVs were adopted early and they had a giant 600V plug to rapid-charge them.
I see several references to the song “Mercury Blues” here in the comments, and I commend your efforts, but every last one of you is overlooking the only recording of it that matters: Jimmy Thackery. There is no substitute.
https://youtu.be/WoCGBsLzeRs
Alan Jackson? Really? That’s weak guys, truely. Nothing more than pop music with a southern twang.
It takes a Villager to preserve the history of Mercury.
As someone who has buyed me a Mercury and cruised it up and down the road, I strongly support Mercury Mondays. There are a lot of great cars and a few trucks in the Mercury line up. I’m looking forward to seeing more. My last Mercury was a very non-exciting Milan but with a 5 speed. I think it was the only one they ever made.
Beyond the obvious, don’t forget the one that got away, the Messenger show car. I had a chance to see it at the 2003 NAIAS, and it was striking.
Tell you what, I haven’t forgotten about Mercury. In fact, I recently acquired a 2004 Grand Marquis to DD. Torch, you have made my week.
‘…wild juggernaut of libido and speed’
This is a large part of why I’m here. Keep it weird, Torch.
One day I will replicate the first car that really made an impression on me, my dad’s cougar that he had when I was six. It was a 1968 Cougar(not an XR7) with a 289 hi-po, and a black interior eight track and all. Oh and it was painted ’69 eliminator orange with Hobbes hand painted about two inches long on the left front fender just ahead of the door to cover a flaw in the paint. It was gorgeous and quick and so very cool, even whith my dorky dad playing the Carpenters as we drove from Coupeville to Everett the long way round.
That Cyclone looks more like a Torino than a Mustang — but I’m no expert.
One of my favorite Steve Miller Band songs is Mercury Blues. Every time I listen to it, I think “What a wasted marketing opportunity.”
And they absolutely made the best lead sleds.
Absolutely nothing is complicated about the feelings in my bathing suit zone caused by muscle cars.
“…I’d like to introduce Mercury Monday!”
Don’t forget the flathead Mercurys.
Thank you, Jason. What a great piece about a wonderful-looking car I never knew existed.
I was a lesser person until today.
Best writing so far—I laughed out loud! Thanks, Torch!
If you want a song that better expresses “all madness and purposeful aggression and yet somehow stylish” then you should go with David Lindley’s version of “Mercury Blues.”
https://youtu.be/vHY0YxdswyY
Alan Jackson’s version is more, oh, Lincoln — and not in a “Hot Rod Lincoln” sense.
Am I reading that third paragraph of the first brochure page correctly?
“375 hp 4V Boss 429?”
Did a search and it seems none were built but one owner did drop a Boss 429 into a Cyclone which was offered for sale in Wichita Kansas in 202 for $85,000.
https://www.hemmings.com/stories/article/1970-mercury-cyclone-spoiler-3
Hemmings goes deeper into engine / axel choices
Axle and another edit button request.
This is such a great piece – thank you Jason!
Everyone forgets about the Cyclone (and its twin the Ford Torino Talladega) as being part of the aero-wars era in NASCAR…I guess not having an insane spoiler does that to your memory.
But I think the Wood Brothers’ record still stands to this day. I still always root for them on Sundays, and I suspect Ford does too…they usually only field a single car in the cup series, and it’s usually main-sponsored by Motorcraft.
Thanks for bringing some much-needed attention back to Ford’s orphaned division! The Cyclone Spoiler is my second-favorite muscle car, right behind the Superbird. It’s also my second-favorite Mercury, right behind the 1958 Turnpike Cruiser.
As a young British child in the 1960’s, it had to be pre-1963, because my Mother was driving a 1961 Sunbeam Rapier too pick me up at school, anyway one of the kids mothers regularly showed up in an absolutely gigantic red hardtop wagon, one of these: https://www.xr793.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/1958-Mercury-Wagons.pdfhttps://www.xr793.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/1958-Mercury-Wagons.pdf
My fragile egg shell mind never fully recovered.
Oh man, that Newton Messagepad review! The more things change, the more they stay the same. All the same advantages and foibles as a modern smartphone, just with cruder graphics and you had to use a stylus. I mean, handwriting recognition and natural language commands still work like 90%, which is still not the same as 100%, and therefore not good enough.
Also, Apple never should have dropped the colors from their logo.
To be fair, “Mercury Blues” was first recorded by K.C. Douglas in 1948, and was a hit for David Lindley in 1981, before Allan Jackson recorded it in 1993. The Steve Miller band also recorded a version of the song.
Yes, yes, and yes, but I’m still proud of DT for knowing a bit of culture for once. He is the man who misses literally every music and movie reference made around here, but he finally knew one!
I must walk before I can run.
I came here to say this. Alan Jackson? He recorded the 4th (and worst) version to be a charting hit.
Lindley’s is a rocked-up raver, while Steve Miller Band took it to a mid-tempo jam.
But the orginal by Douglas is pure, undistilled American blues: just a man, his voice, an acoustic guitar, and lament.
Do the Cougar! First gen had the same 289 as the Mustang, in a body that ladies and gentlemen would be seen in. My grandmother told us she was saving hers for “When you’re old enough to drive.” Reminded that that would be in 4 months there was suddenly much hemming and hawing. I never got the car, but my brothers did and drove the wheels off of it. I now very much wish they had NOT done that, would rock today in a heartbeat.
The ’68 Cougar’s accentuated edginess take on the Mustang was great. I recall a car-salesman family friend showing up with the dealership’s test-drive unit and proudly running a fingernail across its metal(!) grille.
Ting! Ting! Ting! Ting! Ting! Ting!
Robin’s Egg Blue. At the time I thought it wasn’t blazing red enough, now I think it would be incredibly classy.
I had ( regret getting rid of ) a 67 Cougar.
My brother bought it and shortly after, the 289 slipped the timing chain and let loose the pistons of war.
I had a 70 Fairlane ( Torino like ) with a 302.
My uncle owned a service station, and the main mechanic agreed to move my 302 to the Cougar if I gave him the old 289. So, the deed was done.
I can say that the rear springs were longer than a Mustang’s. Bought a set of Mustang springs, found they would not fit. The dealership found me a set, somehow.
Loved both those cars. They ran and ran and ran. And I rev’d the snot out of that 302 all the time.
Merc probably wanted a softer ride for the Cougars. I’m at the age now when I understand the idea.
I’m gonna buy me a Cyclone and cruise up and down the road.
I, too, am crazy ’bout a Mercury. And you, sir, are welcome on my lawn anytime.
I can’t believe there were (at least) 4 generations of Cyclones. Who knew.
We Canucks won’t forget the utilitarian Mercury M pickups that were sold here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_M_series