The Brougham Society on Facebook is well known for their love of the classic idea of the American cruiser: white walls, plush interior, detailed trim, and good looks. Except on Fridays, that is…Free-For-All Friday on TBS’ page can get decidedly interesting. Sometimes even awkward.
Take for example this mid-1990’s Mercury. At one point in time it was a basic four-door Grand Marquis, nothing too spectacular about that. Then something…happened. If it was a flower car for a funeral home, it would just have had two doors, so that’s ruled out. I have no idea if there is a bed or not, and it appears that the cab design simply moved the C-pillar up, mated it with the B-pillar and was welded together and painted white. The rear door wasn’t even completely filled in! That’s just lazy.
I’m torn. Shave the second door handle and finish the doors up, hack the trunklid up to create a tailgate of sorts and I actually might like it. But as it sits this thing is a rolling dumpster fire. I’d have to see how bad the “bed” is before making a call. A Marauder pickup would be cool, but is it worth the effort? I don’t know.
Let’s see your opinions: would you fix it or scrap it?
A Mercury Ranchero .. hmmmmn ,,
Well …. as loathe as I am to admit it . Its a pretty decent use of what otherwise was a pretty worthless car . So … I guess I’ll have to give it a one thumb up and chalk it up to a moment of questionable taste on my part . In other words ..
Fix it / Finish it
I think I’d wash it, wax it and then burn it before it has time to breed.
That’s just way too awkward looking. Prime candidate for demo derby or scrapping. Only way I can see to make it look halfway decent is to extend the doors, get rid of that slope in the back, redo the rear window, fill in the rear door handles and smooth out the lower body cladding…
The “mobile home” behind the car in the first photo kind of explains the who and why.
Not well executed, IMO.
The correct way of doing this is to section the top, throw away the upper B-pillar, and move the entire C-pillar forward, so that there’s more natural curvature to the top and the side and rear window profiles are more pleasing. The rear window is too high, and it’s too “wedgie” now.
To get a decent-sized bed, you’d probably have to convert the c-pillars to “flying buttress” style and use a concave rear window, as the last-gen El Camino/Sprint. Reusing the sedan window cuts close to a foot out of the bed, which is a lot on a 114″ WB “ute.”
I don’t see how you could fix this one without another donor roof and a huge amount of fabrication time.
“A Marauder pickup would be cool . . . .” Yep. Although if one were going to do that much custom body work, perhaps a Marauder coupe would be more worthwhile.
Hmmm… Flip the rear window around so it’s curved in?
jacuzzi in the back and roll !