Here’s a closer look at a car that never existed, not in production form, anyway: a proposed 1949 Mercury streamliner.

A while back here at Mac’s Motor City Garage, we explored the Ford Motor Company’s serious look at fastback models for its all-new Ford, Mercury, and Lincoln lines for 1949. (See the feature here.)  The streamliner was a successful body style for the Motor City at the time, especially at General Motors. But in the end Ford decided to offer a slopeback version only at Lincoln, and it lasted for just one model year. (See the ’49 Lincoln Town Sedan here.)

However, one great thing about working in this web format is that nothing is cast in stone. When more material comes to our attention or a new angle comes to mind, we can always circle back for another swing at the story. These historic Ford photos provide us with a more detailed look at a proposed Mercury version of the 1949 streamliner. The prototype pictured here was never approved for production, of course, but for us that only makes it more interesting.

The styling story at the Ford Motor Company in the late ’40s is a complicated one, with changes in senior management, platforms yet to be determined, and mulltiple stylists and teams working on competing designs. At one point the ambitious postwar product strategy included two Fords, large and small, a Mercury, and two Lincolns, large and larger. Chief designer Bob Gregorie has been working on the large and small Fords since 1943 or before. But as the dust settled, the small Ford was sent to Europe, a new mid-sized Ford was developed, the big Ford became a Mercury, while the Mercury became a Lincoln. That’s the long-story-short version from 10,000 feet, anyway.

When the car that became the 1949 Mercury was still a Ford, there were eight, count ’em, eight proposed body styles. They included a three-passenger business coupe, two convertibles (steel and woody) and two fastback streamliners in two-door and four-door flavors. But when the production 1949 Mercurys were introduced on April 29, 1948, there were but four basic body shells: coupe, sedan, convertible, and wagon. No streamliners. And Mercury had it best sales year to date.

Below: Benson Ford, the middle brother of the three Ford grandsons who became head of the Lincoln-Mercury division in 1948, admires a nicely detailed scale model of the fastback that never was. With our 20/20 hindsight, we can declare that the decision to drop the streamliners was the right call. While the teardtop roofline had its day in the early-to-mid-40s, consumer taste was changing, and by the end of the decade buyers were moving on. The trendy body styles of the early ’50s were pillarless hardtops and all-steel station wagons.