The Mermaid, Bill Stroppe’s far-out ’57 Mercury roadster, was built for one purpose: to go fast in a straight line on the sand at Daytona Beach.

From his shop on Temple Avenue in Long  Beach, California, Bill Stroppe was the Lincoln-Mercury division’s go-to guy for racing all through the ’50s and ’60s. For the  Daytona Beach NASCAR race in 1957, Stroppe prepared a fleet of four new Mercury stock cars, with Fonty Flock scoring a third for the factory team on the beach/road course. For the annual Speed Trials, the straight-line event also held on the sand during Speed Week in February, Stroppe brought something completely different. A topless ’57 Mercury with a tiny windscreen and a giant tail fin, it was called the Mermaid.

Stroppe and his crew, which then included the drag racing Chrisman brothers, Lloyd and Art, constructed the Mermaid from a production ’57 Monterey convertible. The windshield, frame, and top mechanism were removed so Los Angeles Indy car builder Eddie Kuzma could fabricate and install the unique aluminum tonneau cover and vertical stabilizer. It was the giant tail fin, reportedly, that inspired the name Mermaid. Sure, the roadster looked wild, but there was a method to the far-out approach: By eliminating the roof, the plus-sized Mercury’s frontal area was significanly reduced, a critical factor in straight-line speed runs.

The Mermaid’s powerplant was a ’57 Lincoln V8, enlarged from 368 to 387 cubic inches with a .125-inch overbore and Forgedtrue pistons. The full-house mill  featured Hilborn constant-flow fuel injection, a Scintilla magneto, a Harmon & Collins roller cam, and custom-made Hedman headers. Reportedly, the hot rod Lincoln V8 produced more than 400 hp on Stroppe’s dyno.

An experienced Bonneville pilot, Art Chrisman drove the Mermaid on the Florida runs, recording a two-way average of  154.176 mph—good for second place in the experimential classi behind  Wally Parks’ hemi-powered ’57 Plymouth. On one run the tach indicated a speed of 180+ mph but a radiator hose burst, wounding the engine and finishing the Mermaid’s week at Daytona.

Four months later in June, the Ford Motor Company signed on with the Automobile Manufacturers Asssociation’s total racing ban, and that was the end of Lincoln-Mercury’s motorsports program for a while. However, the Mermaid did race at least one more time, mixing it up with Ferraris and Porsches on the Riverside road course in the 1959 Kiwanis Grand Prix with Stroppe himself at the wheel (below). The car was later parted out, reportedly. However, a faithful Mermaid recreation was built by Royce Brechler and is sometimes seen at vintage car events.