Here’s the one and only Ed Sullivan, the Toast of the Town himself, to pitch the 1957 Mercury line. This three-minute promo touts all the great new features.

All through the ’50s and ’60s, Ed Sullivan ruled America’s airwaves on Sunday evenings with his wildly popular CBS variety show. And for many of these years, the presenting sponsor was the Mercury division of the Ford Motor Company. Sullivan’s show was a veritable nexus of show business, drawing the biggest acts of the day, from the stars of stage and screen to Elvis Presley and the Beatles. Truly, it was a really big show.

In the setup to this 1957 commercial spot, Sullivan—with his unmistakable delivery—boasts, “Very shortly we are going to present here Sophie Tucker, Myron Cohen, and more movie stars than you can shake a stick at. But now, get set for a thrill because we’re going to put you in the driver’s seat of a dream car!”

The 1957 Mercury actually was a dream car in this sense: Its all-new sheet metal was based on the flamboyant XM Turnpike Cruiser, a Mercury dream car that debuted at the 1956 Detroit Auto Show. (Read the story of the Turnpike Cruiser here.) Mercury was rolling the dice in adopting the XM Cruiser’s extravagant styling for its production line-up, and the gamble failed to pay off as sales slipped dramatically. Still, the Cruiser design theme produced some distinctive and memorable cars, as we see here. Video below.