I recently attended a local swap meet and while I thoroughly enjoy the experience, I rarely buy anything. Almost all the parts are for mainstream classic cars like the Ford Model A, air cooled Volkswagen, Tri-5 Chevrolet or some variety of muscle car. Not surprisingly no vendor attempts to flog bits to the oddball motors I usually run. What they do have and what I often will purchase is interesting literature. I purchased this 1966 Mercury truck brochure for a measly twenty five cents and I think its worth sharing considering Paul’s 1966 Ford is a CC institution.
By 1966 the Mercury trucks were pretty much identical to their Ford cousins. Click for a larger view.
The last page is a little odd however. While obviously customized for Arnot Mercury Sales Ltd., the first half of the last page is dedicated to the Ford Bronco. Mercury never sold a version of the Bronco however. I wonder if this Arnot also had the Ford franchise in town.
According to Google Street View, 115 Railway Ave no longer has a dealership but instead looks to be a parking lot. There aren’t any results for Arnot Ford either, so the franchise has either folded or been renamed in the past. If there is a Canadian variant of Paul out there driving a red ’66 Mercury, this brochure is for him.
More than once I’ve seen one of these Mercury pickups driving around here. I know for certain from the MERCURY tailgate which is hard to miss. One of these days I’ll get a snapshot.
The REALLY big M!
Seen Mercury and Plymouth pickups a long time ago. Never sure it was anything but a different tailgate. Paul is always talking about the parallel universe in Oz. I always thought the same thing about Canada. One thing for sure is that we get used to what we get used to. It’s always a little shock to the system when we see something from that universe. Mercury/Plymouth/fargo pickups and cheviacs. When the US clamped down on our imports back in the sixties IIRC we diverged even more. Always interesting.
I saw a 1946 or 47 Mercury ute a few months ago. Not a pickup, but an Australian ute, that I’m not entirely clear how it varied from the equivalent Ford.
IINM, Plymouth pickups were sold in the U.S. for about five years, circa 1937-41. I think they were basically Dodge pickups with Plymouth front sheet metal. They were introduced because Plymouth management argued that they needed pickups to match up with Chevrolet and Ford. Dodge, which had been Chrysler’s main truck brand up to that point (due to their history of building trucks going back to before they became part of Chrysler), resisted this and eventually won out.
I’m not sure if Plymouth trucks were actually sold in Canada, since Canadian Chrysler-Plymouth dealers already had Fargo trucks to sell. Fargo was originally planned to be Chrysler’s truck brand before Chrysler bought Dodge, and they were actually sold in the U.S. for a few years in the late ’20s/early ’30s. Fargo was eventually repurposed as a brand of badge-engineered Dodge trucks sold through Canadian Chrysler-Plymouth dealers, and lasted until 1972 in that capacity.
A Mercury TRUCK, what’s next an Oldsmobile SUV?!?!?!
(Oh yeah, wait, that actually happened…)
I don’t want to talk about it. A panther would have been a far better choice. I’ve had four Olds. Three of them treated me very badly.
And then a Cadillac pickup! The End Days of Old Detroit.
I’ve only ever seen a picture of one Mercury truck in a 1957 museum.Being a 57 model myself I thought I’d check out the museum.
We had a 68 Mercury pickup at work as our service truck in the transit bus garage back in the 70’s. It was an M100 half ton short box, 360 automatic, with a push bar so we could push buses back to the shop. Performed pretty good too considering the buses weighed in at about 20000 lbs empty! Needless to say it had a lot of abuse but when I was there it never needed a tranny unlike the 82 3/4 ton Dodge that replaced it, first tranny only lasted less than a year. Smarter heads prevailed over the years…just before I retired in 2010 we got a new Dodge Ram 4500 Diesel, that thing felt like it could push the whole fleet at once up hill!
Ford/Mercury dealers were quite common in Canada, at least on the prairies.
The survivors out here seem to have a 60/40 split in favour of Ford.
Also, a lot of towns were too small to warrant having both a Ford dealer and a Mercury/Meteor dealer, so the Mercury dealers got trucks to sell. Same went for Fargo trucks in towns with a Chrysler dealer but no Dodge dealer.
Every so often while flipping channels I’ve come across some bad Lifetime Channel movie that takes place here in the US, but was very obviously made in Canada. One notices things like an LAPD helicopter with a C-xxxx tail number or red mailboxes in the background. One I remember in particular took place in a small Texas town, and there was a scene where a grizzled farmer rolls into town in his trusty old pickup and stops to chat with someone. Sure enough, it was a Mercury!
The 2005 movie “An Unfinished Life”, starring Robert Redford, and set in Wyoming, prominently features a mid ’60s Mercury pickup truck. Most Americans (who were presumably the largest target market of the movie) are unaware that such a thing ever existed. When she was watching the movie on television one afternoon, my wife noticed that the badging on the pickup said Mercury rather than Ford, and pointed it out to me. An internet search revealed that she was not the first person to wonder about this.
The explanation of how a Mercury pickup found its way into this movie is simple: the movie was filmed in Canada. It’s isn’t clear to me if the filmmakers just ordered up “an old pickup” and didn’t realize that the one they got was a brand never sold in the U.S.; if they did realize this but didn’t care or didn’t think anyone would notice (Mercury pickups were just badge-engineered Fords, so their general appearance is certainly familiar to any American who has been exposed to ’60s American pickups); or if they used it deliberately as kind of an in-joke or as a nod to their Canadian hosts.
I suppose it’s possible that a Canadian Mercury pickup could have ended up in Wyoming. With the exception of the third scenario above, however, I’d be surprised if this was ever discussed by the filmmakers as a plot backstory. If they were concerned about vehicular accuracy, it would have been simpler to just use a brand that was actually sold/commonly seen in the country where the movie was set, and was recognizable to audiences on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border.
What? No V8 in the Merc pickup?
And, “If undelivered, return to Ford Motor Company, Canada.” They really expected their money’s worth for their 2 1/2 cents postage! 😉
There’s a blue one, ca. ’68, with mags and 70-series rubber, that’s parked not so terribly far from me. Been planning to get a pic of it but haven’t yet.
Seeing the big white letters MERCURY on the familiar tailgate that oughta say FORD definitely creates a moment of cognitive dissonance at first glance.
I was just looking at Google street view, and there is a Lil’ Red Express Truck in the restaurant parking lot across the street from the Royal Hotel. And down Railway Ave. across from the mall I saw a ’63 or ’64 Galaxie 2-door coupe. It is driving eastbound on Railway.
The back ground truck on the cover looks to be a mid 60s GM truck; like he is driving away from it after a trade in. And, did Mercury Truck buyers wear suits?
At a car show n shine I attended last summer there were two ’66 pick-ups almost identical, except one was a Ford and one a Mercury. Both two-tone and same trim level. With both hoods open I noticed that the letters M-R-U-Y were mounted to sheetmetal tabs molded in above the grille that would otherwise have F O R D letters, and the letters -E-C-R- were mounted to add-on tabs spot-welded in between the other letters at the factory. That’s how similar these trucks were. Within just a few years the Mercury trucks were a thing of the past and Lincoln-Mercury dealers in Canada carried Ford trucks.
“Within just a few years the Mercury trucks were a thing of the past and Lincoln-Mercury dealers in Canada carried Ford trucks.”
As I understand it, the same thing happened a few years later when Chrysler Corporation discontinued the Fargo brand in Canada; Chrysler-Plymouth dealers were then allowed to sell Dodge trucks.
Hadn’t even heard of such a truck! Thanks for sharing this.
How timely ~
Monday I saw this exact truck , down to the paint color , on a flat bed on Northbound I-5 freeway….
It’s been years since I saw another Mercury truck .
-Nate
Been reading the different comments about Mercury pick-up trucks. Mercury trucks were only available in Canada from 1946 to 1968. I own a 1966 Mercury M100. I am the third owner of this classic truck. 42,000 original miles on this 352 cu.in. V8. It was repainted the original colors 21 years ago. Everything else is all original and in near mint condition. My first pick-up was a 1968 Mercury when I was a teenager. Sure love the Mercury trucks.
The picture looks fake. The street lamps have reflections. I can not trust it.