The mightiest production engine from the Motor City in 1958 was a Mercury: the Super Marauder V8 with 430 cubic inches and 400 horsepower. 

To this day, Mercury’s Super Marauder V8 is a relatively obscure item in Motor City car lore. Introduced in 1958, years before the muscle car era got rolling, it was an outlier.  The big V8 boasted 400 horsepower, besting (in advertised ratings at least) even the ’58 Chrysler 300D with its 392 CID hemi V8 and 380 hp. But Mercury didn’t market to the performance crowd nearly as aggresively as Chrysler, which probably explains why the Super Marauder is not as well known.

The Mercury division went all in on engine displacement in ’58, offering a 430 cubic-inch V8 based on Ford’s MEL (Mercury-Edsel-Lincoln) architecture. (See our feature on the MEL family here.) With a bore and stroke of 4.30 inches by 3.70 inches, it was the largest member of the MEL family in ’58 and intended mainly for Lincoln. In standard Mercury tune with a 10.5:1 compression ratio and a single Holley four-barrel carb, the 430 produced 360 hp at 4800 rpm—fairly impressive in itself. To develop the Super Marauder, Mercury went to Billl Stroppe of Long Beach, California, Ford’s performance expert on the West coast and friend of Benson Ford, CEO of the Lincoln-Mercury division.

Stroppe swapped the single four-barrel for a set of three Holley 2300 two-barrel carbs, vacuum-actuated, on a dual-plane aluminum intake manifold. The 10.5:1 compression ratio was maintained, and while there was some thought given to more radical valve timing, ultimately the standard camshaft was retained as well. Simply by improving the large  V8’s breathing capacity, the tops of the torque and power curves were elevated, allowing the Super Marauder to produce 400 hp at 5200 rpm and 500 lb-ft of torque at 3200 rpm.

With its finned rocker covers and eye-grabbing cast aluminum air cleaner assembly, the Super Marauder V8 had eye appeal to match the impressive power and torque numbers. Early hot rodder, motorcycle racer, novelist, former Ford stylist, and Rod & Custom magazine editor Lynn Wineland was responsible for styling the air cleaner housing—a fine example of mid-century modern industrial design. (A handful of Lincolns were also produced with the 3×2 setup, but without the lettering on the air cleaner.)

While the Super Marauder V8 was available only with the Multi-Drive Merc-o-Matic automatic transmission, there is some confustion (for us, anyway) as to what models were produced with the brute. According to the factory materials, it was offered only in the Park Lane and Montclair convertibles, Turnpike Cruiser, and station wagons. However, we’ve seen them in other body styles as well, and we suppose that may be because the Super Marauder hardware was also offered as an over-the-counter dealer package. The experts say that all told, around 100 examples were produced.