Mercury moved upmarket for 1955 with a new top-of-the-line model called the Montclair, and the top may have been the greatest attraction.
For years folllowing its 1939 introduction, the Ford Motor Company’s Mercury division offered a single product, the Mercury 8. It was something like a tradition. But as car buyers responded to a greater variety of choices available across the U.S. market, in 1952 the lineup was expanded to two cars, Mercury and Mercury Monterey (the latter took its name from a ’50-’51 coupe specialty model). For 1955 a new top-of-the-line vehicle was introduced, and now Mercury was able to offer a range of three cars: Mercury, Monterey, and the most luxurious and expensive Mercury yet: the Montclair.
For ’55, all Mercurys were treated to new exterior styling with a wraparound windshield, along with a longer chassis with a 119-inch wheelbase—four inches more than the otherwise similar Ford platform. As the division flagship, the Montclair came standard with the hotter version of the 292 cubic-inch Y-Block V8 with an 8.5:1 compression ratio, dual exhausts, and 198 hp. Montclair body styles included a convertible and a four-door sedan, but the standout of the group was the sleek two-door Hardtop Coupe.
The Montclair hardtop featured an exclusive roofline and greenhouse that was dramatically lower than the lid on the Monterey or Ford hardtops. (The Ford Crown Victoria received the same dropped roofline, but with a B-pillar.) The look was a hit with consumers, and for 1956 all Ford and Mercury hardtop body shells shared the lower top and glass assembly.
To achieve an even lower apparent profile on the Montclair, Mercury stylists came up with a clever trick: a band of stainless trim that traveled from A-pillar to C-pillar a few inches below the beltline. With contrasting two-tone paint often matched to the top, this element served to visually draw the daylight opening down into the body, making the roof look even lower. The handsome Hardtop Coupe was by far the best-selling Montclair in ’55 at more than 73,000 units, including 1,786 Plexiglass-topped Sun Valley models.
Along with the addtional exterior brightwork, the Montclair also featured a swanky interior with bold cloth-and-vinyl fabric combinations, full carpeting, and bright-metal trim on the door panels and window surrounds, all standard. Popular extra-cost options included power steering and brakes, electric windows and seat, and Merc-O-Matic transmission. Starting from a base price of $2,631 for the Hardtop Coupe, a well-equipped Montclair could list out at $3,000 or more, comfortably in Buick Super territory.
Mercury must have been doing something right in 1955, for the division scored its best sales year to date at nearly 330,000 cars, with the fancy Montclair contributing almost a third of the volume. The Montclair continued as the top of the line at Mercury through 1956, but it was then demoted to mid-range status with the introduction of the Turnpike Cruiser in 1957.
Mercury seemed to do well from 1949-56 then all of FoMoCo went nuts. It took Mercury until ’63 to get back into a groove but they could never keep the brand on an even keel–which was a shame, because there were a lot of great Mercuries that were overshadowed by GM and even Chrysler and it didn’t have to be that way.
The problem was that Ford could never decide what to do with Mercury. Was it a slightly more dressed up Ford? Or was it a major step above the Ford line, covering the middle ground above the Fairlaine 500/Galaxie, but comfortably under the cheapest Lincoln? More damaging is that once having Mercury cover the one extreme, Ford would turn around and shift it to the other. Mercury never had an identity, other than “fancier Ford” which eventually killed it.
Mercury, Buick, and the rest did very well in 1955 and 1956 but then got hammered by the 1957-58 recession.
I had my eye on a 1955 Mercury 2dr HT around 1963 but could not afford the $700 asking price in a used car lot. AT 18 I never thought of a bank loan. Before I was old enough to drive, my brother-in-law had a new 1959 Mercury sedan company car. We cruised through a bad snow storm from Winnipeg to Regina on the TransCanada highway and it never missed a beat, and when we hit Regina it was pushing snow with the front bumper on our residential street. But my brother-in-law said it was the worst car esthetically he had ever had. Fit and finish was terrible.
Nice car – the front reminds me a bit of the Lincoln Futura.