This 1962 Mercury Meteor 2-door represents an unusual (and short) chapter in FoMoCo history. The smaller Meteor was only made for two years and were based on the comparable Fairlane. This one is fresh out of 40 years of storage and is located in Shelton, Connecticut. It’s for sale here on eBay with a buy-it-now of $2,750 and open bidding below that.
As you can see from the front bumper, the car hasn’t led a soft life. That being said, the only rust is supposedly a small hole in the driver’s side floor. There’s some work to be done on the right front fender from a crease, but I don’t think that’s too much to fix considering some of the rust buckets I’ve seen!
The “jet pod” tail lights are a far cry from the comparable Fairlane’s. I like the clean look in the rear and the sweeping trim down the sides of the car. I’ve never seen one of these Meteors in person, although I’ve seen a lot of similar Fairlanes. There were roughly 160k Meteors produced in 1962 compared to 300k Fairlanes in ’62 alone, so I guess that makes sense.
While the interior isn’t perfect, I don’t think it would look too bad once it was cleaned up. It could certainly be a lot worse, and I think the black paint and red interior are a great contrast. According to this reference, this is “Red Crush Vinyl and Black Westport Stripe” on the seats. The seller has pulled the carpet up to expose the floor; I’m hoping it will get replaced with red by the car’s new owner. Since this is a bench seat rather than buckets, we know it’s not the S-33 sporty model, and I think it’s the base model because looking at this brochure it appears the Custom models have a stainless or aluminum panel behind the rear wheels.
As best as I can tell, this is the original 223 cubic inch inline 6-cylinder. The seller tells us that they were able to free up the frozen engine through penetrating oil and working the fan blades by hand. The original rescuer of the car after it’s storage period (not the current seller) purchased new tires, a new fuel tank and sender, 2 brake drums and a master cylinder rebuild kit, none of which are installed but all are included. The seller explains (as does the note on the side window) that the car has no brakes at the moment, so I’d plan on rebuilding that master cylinder soon! Let us know if you’d like to bring this car home; I see it as something both unusual and a pretty solid vehicle to start with. As someone who really doesn’t like rust, I find this car very appealing!
Source: barnfinds.com
