Here’s something of an exotic catch. The 1962-1963 Mercury Meteor was an unqualified dud. It sold 69k in ’62, and 51k in ’63 before it was retired. And looking at how Comet sales dipped those two years and then bounced back for ’64, most of those Meteor sales obviously came out of its tail (beard, for you Brits).
And all of 4,865 of these S-33 hardtop coupes were sold in 1963, which means only the wagons were rarer. The S-33 was the bucket seat top trim of the family. That doesn’t mean it was genuinely sporty; the standard engine was the rather feeble 170 CID Falcon six. Unlike the Fairlane and Falcon, which had V8 badges when thusly equipped, the Meteor apparently didn’t, so no way to tell. But then even the available V8s weren’t exactly breathtaking.
The 221 inch V8 sported all of 145 hp, and the “Lightning” 260 inch V8 upped that to 164. Transmissions were either a non-synchro first three speed (with optional overdrive) or the two-speed Merc-O-Matic. Not exactly meteoric. But it did have precision front ball bearings!
But Ford went to the trouble of extending the Meteor’s wheelbase (at the rear) by one whole inch from the Fairlane, its otherwise platform and body buddy. That was presumably done to give it a bit more gravitas from the 114″ wb Comet. Oh well; it must have seemed like a good idea at the time.
Luckily, FoMoCo never used the name of this dud again.
Unless it’s Canada. The Meteor was a successful FoMoCo brand in Canada fron 1949 through 1981. It was a lower price model intended for Lincoln-Mercury dealers.
Strangely, the Meteor name was temporarily discontinued for 62 and 63 when Ford hijacked the name for the American market. I guess a low price Mercury didn’t achieve the same measure of success in the US.
Even as I typed, something in the back of the mind squeaked “it’s not the only other Meteor, you know”, but then refused to reveal anything more. Oh dear. Or O Canada, perhaps. They’ve even featured on this site before.
FoMoCo OZ used a Meteor grill on the 56 Ford Customline they built forever in the 50s creating the Star model 59 I think Ive seen them in OZ we didnt get em here NZ kept up with the model changes
Isn’t that a variant of the Laser?
It is, so a booted variant of the Mazda 323, really. It sold quite well, and was badged thus in the next gen too.
I found a base MSRP of the ’62 Fairlane of $2317; I could not find one for the Meteor. I’m guessing that the Meteor didn’t offer anything of value in exchange for a presumably higher price. I’m also guessing that advertising “money-saving features” is not the way to push a presumably more upscale car.
Base prices for a 1962 Meteor:
$2,340 for the standard four door
$2,428 for the Custom four door
$2,278 for the standard two door sedan
$2,366 for the Custom two door sedan
$2,509 for an S-33 as seen here
All as per the Encyclopedia of America Cars, copyright 1996
Thanks; I am a rank amateur here.
You are welcome. It was a great question, so I just wanted to help fill in a few blanks.
In addition to the longer wheelbase, the Meteor was substantially longer overall.
As part of the general breakdown of the US brand hierarchy, there was no telling what kind of person was buying a Meteor, so it’s hard to know whether money saving features would move the metal. It’s a slightly snobby Ford Fairlane for the slightly snobbier Mercury brand. A traditional middle brand customer (Olds, Mercury, etc) shopping the smaller cars from these names would at least superficially be interested in operating cost, else they’d buy a standard size car, but such a person might still value the image boost of a more expensive brand.
The only Meteor owners I remember were the older parents of families that drove full-sized Mercurys for family cars. Its safe to assume they bought based on the recommendation of their adult children who already had a satisfactory dealer relationship which reassure their parents who weren’t savvy about cars.
I own a 1961 mercury meteor 800 2 door hardtop
How about pictures of your ’61 Mercury Meteor 800 two door hardtop?
I still have a dusty 1/25 scale AMT model of a ’63 hardtop on my shelf. I remember seeing them as new cars at my favorite Lincoln-Mercury dealer, Arkport Motors, Arkport, NY where I always bugged my dad to swing into to see the Lincolns they had in the 1960’s. The Mercury Meteor should have become the Comet for 1964. But the car was a bust.
I built one of those back in the early 70’s. Found it still on the shelf at the very eccentric Oddo’s hobby shop in my hometown. Found a ’60 Ranchero there, also a ’63 Monterey convertible and a few others. Plus the 50’s Studebaker and Packard Clipper Dinky Toys I still have, along with a few others.
Mercury just didn’t have the sales to slice and dice the market so finely in 1962-63. And with the Comet a decent amount larger than the Falcon, that middle spot between Comet and the Big M was mighty small, indeed.
I liked the looks of these Meteors, but 1961-64 was in one of Mercury’s periodic “Ford-clone” phases in about everything they offered, so there was really no reason to go there.
Can’t you tell this Meteor is an upscale car relative to the Comet and Fairlane? Apparently neither could the public! Maybe they should have given the Meteor a breezeway rear window too!
Those periodic ‘Ford-clone’ years gave customers little reason to bother with a Mercury except that the brand loyalist ‘ladder’ was still fixed in the minds of many. Mercurys being sold alongside Lincolns helped with the upscale image.
We had a number of Mercury owners in the 1960’s here who swore the Mercury was a better car than a Ford. That it rode better, handled easier, was more of a road car meaning better for long-distance trips, was good for more trouble-free miles, was more luxurious (true at times) and a better all-around value. And nobody better try tell them any different!
True. Which raises an interesting question: Would Chrysler have had enough sales to launch an intermediate (Chrysler Coronado? Saratoga?) in 1965, along with the Belvedere and Coronet?
Interesting question, Chrysler should have tried a ‘luxury’ intermediate in ’65 if for no other reason than to counter the Buick Skylark/Special. Without such a car, Chrysler became strictly identified as a large, old man’s car, a death sentence when smaller luxury cars became accepted.
The pairing of Chrysler and Plymouth at the dealer level made this tricky.
The Chrysler nameplate still carried some clout in those days, so an intermediate-size Chrysler for “a few dollars a month more” would have stolen sales from the upper-level Plymouth intermediates. That dynamic hampered the Fury VIP.
What Chrysler Division really needed in those days was a personal luxury coupe to compete with the Buick Riviera, Ford Thunderbird and Oldsmobile Toronado.
Or else bite the bullet, and admit that Dodge was the real competitor to Ford and Chevrolet, and turn Plymouth into the budget car for tightwads and fleet buyers, and let Chrysler do the heavy lifting with upscale models (which is essentially what had happened by the late 1970s, with the advent of the Cordoba and LeBaron).
But Plymouth was the fourth best-selling brand in 1965, so that strategy would have been tough to sell to dealers and shareholders at that time.
“… and turn Plymouth into the budget car for tightwads and fleet buyers,”
From the Plymouth owners I knew then, that was their profile to a man! The Plymouth VIP garnered poor sales in our area, the Chrysler Newport was the choice of the Mopar buyer who wanted ‘more car for their money”.
Yes indeed, a personal luxury coupe was what Chrysler badly needed in the 1960’s well before the Cordoba arrived….about a decade late.
Ford didn’t understand the hierarchy game. Just as the Edsel was trying to fill a niche that was EXACTLY filled by Mercury, this Meteor was trying to fill a niche that the Comet had CREATED and successfully filled.
Competing with the opposition’s niche makes sense, but competing with your own niche doesn’t.
I feel like the Comet was one of Mercury’s wasted opportunities. From 1960-1965, it really was quite different from the equivalent Ford model, the Falcon, and it had an identity of its own. Starting in 1966, however, it just became a mild facelift of a Fairlane/Torino and eventually the Maverick. Too bad.
In 1962 Ford nailed the concept of compact, mid-size and standard car lines with the Fairlane and Meteor, a hierarchy that dominated big three thinking into the 1980s, eventually adding “sub-compacts” to the mix.
Ford failed to capitalize on this leadership as the early execution of the smaller cars was initially dominated by common Detroit thinking that buyers of less than standard cars were economy focused, instead of looking for a nice car in a smaller package. Even after the success of the Falcon Futura and Corviar Monza trims, Detroit struggled a bit with upscale features and drive trains in smaller cars..
GM finally figured out the no compromise mid-size car in 1964, and wiped Ford on the floor in the segment for years, particularly with Mercury struggling to figure out how to compete with cars like Oldsmobile Cutlass.
As luck would have it, a red ’62 or ’63 woody Meteor wagon was for many years in the garage two doors south of my parents. The couple that had it were circumstantially as unique as the car. Their house was owned by her parents, they helped her out as she had some learning disabilities. She didn’t drive. He spent some time in the state penitentiary for child molestation, coming home in the early ’70s, and he woke up the time-capsule Meteor. I had never seen the car the first 3-4 years we lived on the street.
There was a bit of controversy on our street as to being neighborly with the couple after he came home, there were a lot of young kids on the street, so I guess this is not surprising.
Even as a hardtop the subject car is a bit of a styling dud – the 1958 Thunderbird roof was running its course by this time.
The sedans and wagons were better lookers….
This might be the right forlorn 1960s car for this Ford Guy. Unless it’s missing some oddball Mercury-only part, it’s right-sized, Falcon-simple to maintain and get parts for, and no threat to anyone at the car shows I probably wouldn’t attend anyway.
Yeah, I’d rather have a **1965** Comet, but this one seems to be calling my name. Still, when’s the last time I saw one anywhere? I’ll bet it was pre-1990.
Thanks for giving this modest little car its moment in the sun today. For fun, here’s a beauty-shoot, though a ’62 (all I had):
I don’t remember these having so much tail wagging behind them. Now I get it, it’s due to the significantly longer trunk (and 1″ longer wheelbase) compared to the Fairlane. The effect is not unpleasant, but I wanted to see what it would look like with the C-pillar moved backward. It’s objectively more balanced, I think, but it lost some of the forward lean of the original, which I find somewhat appealing.
What a difference a couple inches can make! So often, for these Photoshop-revisions, it seems best to pull rear axle backward. Here, the C-pillar makes the difference.
I owned a ’63 Meteor S-33, a black over red one. Nice looking car. It was underpowered (V8) but drove and rode pretty well in spite of the bias ply tires. I didn’t drive it much, lost interest in it, and sold it after less than a year, replacing it with a red over red 65 Comet hardtop, 289 A-code, 4-speed. Loved that one.
I don’t think there’s anything particularly wrong with the Meteor that isn’t present on any other Ford or Mercury product of the time, but there’s something extra average about it as best I can describe it. It’s like if you had to describe a early 60s Ford to a sketch artist with the challenge of not mentioning round afterburner taillights, the Meteor is the drawing you’d get.
Certainly not a bad car in its own right, but the Comet was basically the proto-midsize car anyway, being an enlarged Falcon, all the Meteor was was another enlargement of it without the benefit of budget to differentiate the Edsel rooted Comet appeared to have. It’s sad that the Comet was clearly the more successful formula, but ultimately got the same halfassed treatment as the Meteor in its chassis change for 1966
Of note, Ford’s naming schemes/themes did Mercury no favors. Names like Comet and Meteor you’d expect to be brand siblings of a car called Galaxie(sp), not Monterey, a car named after a very earthbound but swanky place, like Fairlane.
It seems that all through the 60s Ford could never manage three distinct car lines. The Fairlane/Falcon pairing always resulted in the midsize car being smaller and lighter than the competition until the 1972 redesign of the Torino line.
The service manuals I used to check out of my local library told the tale: there was Ford/Mercury and then there was the one that covered Falcon/Fairlane/Torino/Mustang/Montego/Comet/Cougar. One drive in a Fairlane or Torino up through 1971 was all you needed to tell that these did not compare that well with, say, a GM A body.
The intermediate class is where the market dominance – and financial resources – of GM versus Ford and Chrysler really came to light.
In 1962, it made sense for Ford to base its intermediate-size offering on the Falcon platform. The only real competition was the Rambler Classic/Ambassador. The GM “senior compacts” had a lackluster sales record, and their profitability wasn’t that great, given the variations among the divisions’ offerings, the new (and expensive) technology used by each model, and their respective sales.
Chrysler basically blundered into the segment…the 1962-64 platform wasn’t ideal as a Plymouth and Dodge full-size car, but with a face lift, it became a viable entry for the burgeoning intermediate segment.
GM, meanwhile, could regroup by designing and engineering a new body and chassis for 1964, while spreading the costs over four divisions. It thus dominated the segment well into the early 1980s.
Cars like the Meteor were neither needed nor valued. by most Ford/Mercury dealers. However Lincoln/Mercury dealers were another story. They needed cars like the Meteor in their lineup to better match up with the choices available at GM’s BOP dealerships.
OK, I will stand taking exception with those who, unfortunately – find these cars rather bland, uninspiring = ‘generic’. A lot of folks didn’t appreciate the Meteor and to this day enjoy beating on its little windsplitted hood. At least there are a few of us still out here who find these Meteors almost perfectly sized and in retrospect, rather nicely styled for their day – especially in light of certain ‘constraints’ imposed by Ford management regarding their potential to offer so much more than they were allotted, as originally outfitted and offered. I personally owned a castilian gold and black ’63 S33 hardtop for many years. And it was built with genuine integrity, I will claim right up there among the most sharp-looking and reliable FoMoCo cars I’ve owned. Dependable and nice riding (with Mercury-exclusive ‘cushion link’ suspension) – decently smooth roadability – even if the 164hp 260 was at best, barely adequate. Especially with that 260 bolted to its long-lived but sluglike 2-speed ‘merc-o-matic’ = yuck!) At least ‘merc-o-matic’ possessed outstanding longevity and never once required service – short of routine periodical fluid changes. Even so, these cars badly wanted the 289 – or at the least – the seldom found optional 4-speed on the console. But it was a rock solid, reliable set of wheels and with exception of the typical 260 ‘oil seepage along the heads’ issue – the appeal of driving the very last FoMoCo product adorned with TRUE fins (and those magnificently sculptural one-of-a-kind rocket ship worthy taillights) – for my money a package worth the price of admission alone. From every angle that S33 was nicely styled – (the only obvious but debatable ‘weak sister’ of the design might arguably being its rather heavy handed and lackluster grille design. Too bad these ’63 Meteors didn’t have a more appealing roofline on the hardtops – either the 63-1/2 Ford ‘scatback’ roofline – or akin possibly more or less to the ’67 LTD 2-door HT. THAT along with possible addition of a convertible model and better executed front end would have made this Meteor one alluring package – and an even more highly sought after collectible in terms of ‘contemporary desirability’.
to date.