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Sometimes you look at the price of a car for sale and you ask yourself, "Is that a pretty good deal, or would I have to be smoking the rock to pay that much?" That's what Nice Price Or Crack Pipe is all about, and we're going to follow up yesterday's high-buck factory-racer '63 Pontiac - which 65% of you felt went for way too much green- with another Detroit classic. This time it's a super-cherry 1978 Mercury Grand Marquis, a car with just 4,054 miles on the clock. This has got to be the nicest '78 Grand Marquis in the world, and it's got all the options: 460 engine, power everything, cruise control, even the 8-track player. But fifteen grand? What do you think? galleryPost('NPOCP78GrandMarquis', 6, '1978 Mercury Grand Marquis For 15 Grand On eBay'); [eBay Motors] , thanks to Mechimike for the tip! 15 thousand bucks for a 1978 Mercury Grand Marquis? ( surveys )
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newVideoPlayer("/78_Zephyr_Chevette_476.flv", 506, 423,""); Here's a two-for-one Classic Ad Watch deal from the darkest days of the Malaise Era . First up, a Gladding Chevrolet (Maryland) offer for a Chevette with factory air for just 99 bucks a month. Before you jump in the time machine to take advantage of that sweet deal, however, consider the '79 Mercury Zephyr, which was cheaper than both the Toyota Corona and the '78 Zephyr.
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Welcome to Down On The Street , where we admire old vehicles found parked on the streets of the Island That Rust Forgot: Alameda, California. We saw a '65 Mercury Comet Caliente last week, and before that the '65 Comet 202 and the '64 Comet Cyclone . No shortage of Falcon-based comets on the island… but how about the Maverick -based Comet? Mavericks themselves, sure- a '70 and two 74s - but now we're going to look at our first Malaise Comet. The Mercury Division couldn't do a whole lot to de-Maverickize the Comet, but they were able to get these distinctive taillights on the car. Sure, they hurt your eyes even after 35 years, but they're definitely of their time . I found this car less than a block from the '65 IHC Travelall . The '73 Comet 2-door listed at $2,432, which was 102 bucks more than the equivalent Maverick (and $55 more than a 2-door base Chevy Nova). The 200-cubic-inch inline six engine was standard, but you could upgrade to the 250 six or...
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While Lincoln-Mercury dealers sold the European-made Ford Capri in North America, the cars themselves had no marque. Just to make things more confusing, Ford branded the later Fox Mustang-clone and Mazda 323-based Capris with Mercury emblems. Anyway, none of that matters for this car, which I spotted in an East Bay wrecking yard last weekend, because it has a date with the cold jaws that will get it ready for another spin of the steel-reincarnation wheel. galleryPost('DOTJ76Crapi', 3, '1976 Capri Down On The Junkyard');
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Yesterday, we saw the Fear And Loathing On The Campaign Trail '72 Hell Project competition go to the '72 Volvo 1800ES by a Nixon-over-McGovern-style landslide, with 73% of the vote favoring the Volvo over the '72 Cougar. Today we're going to punish reward Graverobber for his run of incredible PCH tirades (such as this one , this one , or- my personal favorite- this one ) by making him work harder for a PCH Tipster T-shirt than anyone else ever has. The deal I made with him: he chooses the cars, he writes the tirade for the cars, I include the tirade in the post... and everyone wins! Well, except for those who grumble about seeing Mercury Cougars in two consecutive Choose Your Eternity challenges, that is, but we'll pay that price. Perhaps the second-gen Mercury Cougar took such a beating from the Volvo in yesterday's matchup because most folks much prefer the styling of the first-gen 1967-70 models. If so, today's cat might have a better chance, because it's...
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In possibly the most humiliating defeat for France since the whole Algerian débâcle, a French car lost a Project Car Hell challenge to American machinery, with the '61 Simca Aronde getting crushed beneath the rusted hulks of a pair of Lincoln Continentals... and that's with the Simca getting some help from one of the finest PCH commenter tirades we've ever seen (notice hereby given: Graverobber has raised the Commenter Tirade Bar to hitherto unprecedented levels). We'll need to give France a chance to regain its former PCH glory very soon, but we're going to get all political-journalist on your ass with today's choices. I'm not one of those guys (and they're all guys) who blindly worship every mark that the dope-palsied hand of Hunter S. Thompson ever set on paper, but when the man was on, he was really on (insert rant here about annoying HST wannabes who focus on the lifestyle instead of the writing). Fear And Loathing On The Campaign Trail '72 stands...
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newVideoPlayer("/70_Monterey_476.flv", 506, 423,""); W. C. Fields died in 1946, but his mock-crafty drunk persona still had sufficient cultural resonance 24 years later for Mercury to use an impersonator to sell the huge '70 Monterey 2-door hardtop. We think this ad would have been better had the Fields character taken a big swill from a hip flask prior to getting behind the wheel, but that might have been going too far, even in 1970. We've seen an example of the big Merc down on the Alameda street.
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The Mercury Cougar has been reinvented many times, but we've only seen a couple of incarnations in this series. We've seen the lean and mean '68 Cougar and the Bloated Final Year Of The Rebadged Mustang Cougar , but what about the Farrah Fawcett-Approved Cougar? I found this appealingly rough '75 parked across the street from the '82 280ZX Turbo and quite close to one of Alameda's non-Buick Skyhawks . This car definitely runs and drives, but with gas prices closing in on five bucks there's no telling how much longer it will be possible for its owner to quench the thirst of its 351, 400, or 460. Now that's class! A Cougar emblem in the little opera window! See, the Malaise Era wasn't en tire ly about diminished expectations- you could get down and funky with that special someone in the luxurious vinyl comfort of your Cougar's back seat, while the same activities in a cramped 60s Cougar would be more like a game of Twister inside a packing crate. Don't...
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newVideoPlayer("73_Mercuries_476.flv", 463, 387,""); The cage door creeeeeaks open, (perhaps suggesting the rust that will soon assail most Malaise Lincolns and Mercuries), and the angry mountain lion struts out into a field full of parked cars. The Continental... the Marquis... Montego... Comet... Cougar... they're all here, and they're all packing more bloat and less power than ever before.
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newVideoPlayer("78_Mercury_Cougar_Cheryl_Tiegs_476.flv", 463, 387,""); While Farrah Fawcett merely allowed a cougar to sit on the roof of her car in her '75 Cougar ad , Cheryl Tiegs lets a mountain lion ride shotgun in her '78 (equipped with the hyper-Malaise "Midnight Chamois" option package). Not only that, but her hair totally out-feathers Farrah's, and her haunted mansion gives her more of an air of mystery. Did we mention the 134-horse 302 that came standard in this 3,800-pound car?
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newVideoPlayer("74_Comet_Capri_476.flv", 463, 387,""); How is it possible that a car weighing just over 2,200 pounds and equipped with a 2-liter engine can drive from Phoenix to Los Angeles at the maddeningly geriatric speed of 50 miles per hour and manage only a pathetic 32.4 miles per gallon? Yes, that's the best the '74 Capri could do! We're thinking it was the weight of several tons of Malaise pushing down hard on the car during the trip (not to mention the restrictive first-gen catalytic converters and miserable engine compression ratios of the era). The six-cylinder Comet made the same trip and grunted out an Saudi-oil-baron-pleasing 26.6 MPG, so we shudder to imagine the sort of single-digit mileage a 460-equipped Country Squire would have achieved.
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In 1978, Mercury was looking to sell 200,000 new cars in six weeks, and that meant their "Personal Car" was needed to lead the way. We're not quite sure what's so personal about it, but it's boldly styled with a handsome new grille! Sure, it's a little more, uh, sub stan tial than its 60s forebears, but those small Cougars were a little too impersonal for car buyers' tastes. Keep watching when the ad is done, because you get a bonus Old Milwaukee Beer ad, complete with Louis Armstrong impersonator and general Malaise-y goodness all around.
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