1964 Mercury - Heavy.

Today's ad comes to us from 1964, when Mercury was still a presence in racing, somehow. Their main bragging point in this ad? More weight. You know how every race team chants the mantra "More weight! More weight!"? It's that kind of more-is-more thinking that made Mercury one of the cars of choice for grandparents everywhere until the brand's demise in 2010.

"What's Mercury got? Up to 319 pounds more heft than other medium-price cars. A bigger engine. Heavier, sturdier frame and construction. A solid, road-hugging ride." I've never test driven a car and thought to myself "if only this car were heavier, I'd take it home right now." Likewise, I've never walked onto a dealer lot and said "Sir or Ma'am, show me your heaviest car. Either that, or show me the hole in the Earth's crust created when your heaviest car fell to the center of the planet. Yes, I will buy whatever is at the bottom of your deepest crater."

I guess a heavy car will feel like it's hugging the road in the vertical plane, but try to turn a corner at anything other than single-digit speeds and your door handle will feel very much like it wants not only to hug the road, but also wants to take the road home to meet it's parents and pick out curtains with the road. A chubby car with a "built for comfort" suspension will handle like a basset hound that wants to have it's tummy scratched. This is fine for a certain market segment, but trying to imply "performance" in the same breath requires the kind of dishonesty that takes a marketing manager to understand.

What's with "proved"? I looked it up. I know you're going to say "no way", but it's easy to find blogs by pedantic grammar prudes. This one eventually gets around to explaining that "proven" is an adjective. "Proved" is a verb in the past tense. "He proved he was an alien by consuming our chihuahua." vs. "It has been proven that authors of grammar blogs are tedious company." Still, "Mercury has proved its roadability" sounds weird to me.

At the bottom of this ad, they mention that we should ride Walt Disney's "magic skyway" at the FoMoCo Wonder Rotunda and the World's Fair. Cool! Let's see what that was like...



That is frikkin fantastic. Most notably, the asexual Ken doll of an announcer really makes the squareness come to life. I like the way he says "reptals" and "coo-garr", like he's just stepped off his flying saucer and is enjoying learning to speak our strange little language. Consider that downloaded to my smarty-phone. Also notice that the sun was different back then, warming the Earth in a violet light that really enhanced acne.

Here's a link to one of our previous posts about the Ford Rotunda. It's a postcard that shows what it looked like from the outside. Cars in tubes. The Future!!!!

Click for big.