We always love to see a good roadside sighting, but reader Michael H didn’t spot this mystery find parked along the side of the road. Rather, he spotted it while out on a hike in the McDowell Mountain Preserve. I’ll let him tell you more about his sighting below!
From Michael – I frequently hike in the McDowell Mountain Preserve near my home in Scottsdale and usually stay on the marked trails. However, today I decided to be adventurous and follow the wash. As I made my way through the cacti, endless river rock, saguaro skeletons and mesquite trees I came upon a desert car.
It looked like it had been driven through the desert decades ago and gotten stuck in the wash. It has a wonderful patina from the desert sun. The chrome is in far better shape than the rest of the car. As a car person I can tell most makes and models of automobiles but I am at a loss here. Although it looks like 1950’s American made. Hopefully, someone out there can tell me what this car is.
I have seen project cars in worse shape than this car put back together and made drivable again. As a car person I would like to see this desert car have a second life and as an environmentalist, I would like to see this car removed from the desert. Maybe someone out there can make both happen. Please reach out to me if someone is interested in the car and maybe we can work together with the preserve to extricate this desert gem!
It sure would be cool to see this classic pulled from the desert and put back on the road, but given the condition it’s unlikely. You never know though, like Michael said, we’ve seen worse brought back! I have my guess as to what this is, but rather than risk embarrassing myself, I’ll leave it up to you guys to figure it out. And if one of you is interested in attempting a rescue, email us and we will put you in touch with Michael. Our special thanks to him for sending in his sighting. If you’ve stumbled across an interesting find, we’d love to see it, so send your photos to us at mail@barnfinds.com!
1954 Ford Fairlane
’53-’54 Mercury.
Reckon yer right SLW. Bout a 54 Ford Skyliner.
54 Ford advt attached.
That badge looks like ‘Mainline’
you know what this is a good place to stay away from! unless you like scorpions ,rattle snakes or other things that will kill you!
It looks like an early-50’s Mercury. It’s scrap.
The only way it gets removed is if the state pays the bill.
Steve R
53 Ford judging by the side trim.
Mercury.
53 Ford mainline not a Mercury. Side trim and taillights are Ford not Mercury. The broken logo you keep thinking is Mercury is a mainline logo. Mercury used block letters for their name until the very late 50s/ early 60’s.
’53 Ford Customline
Leave the car, take the cannoli. It’s hard to “dig a hole” with all that rock.
Good paraphrasing of my all time favorite line from a Godfather movie. I bow to your greatness.
Agree that it’s a ’53 Ford, except It’s a Mainline, Fairlane wasn’t around until ’55
Photo # 3 shows the Mercury emblem shadow and what is left of the emblem. It is a Mercury.
Keep drinking gasoline pal. Side trim and lights are Ford. That’s a broken Mainline emblem. A Mercury script emblem like that would have come off a cougar etc from much later. Go look up the side trim if you’re not convinced .
Tail lights give it away as a Ford .
No… the cast Mercury badge font runs along straight with no rises, except for the capital ‘M’. Photographer Jill Redie has a good BW pic online. Taillights are wrong for a mercury monterey or anyhting like that. ‘Ford Customline’, can you dig it ( :
No…The Mercury badge font runs straight along the top from the capital ‘M’. Jill Redie has a good BW pic of that Mercury badge.
It is Ford Customline, can you dig it?
From the holes, I’d judge it to be a 1953 Target.
That rear shot looks authentic.
At first I thought it was an Oldsmobile but the chrome on the side reminds me of a Mercury Monterey.
Same thoughts here.
53 Ford. Did you look in the trunk for Jimmy Hoffa?
Rescue my left butt cheek.
A quick search led me to this one.
Looking good.
https://classics.autotrader.com/classic-cars/1953/ford/customline/100863019
That black one looks not unlike the one that “Myrt ‘Hubcaps’ Lesh” sold Barmey Fife, on the Andy Griffith episode “Barney’s First Car (1963) ”
Myrt was played by Ellen Corby who later in her career would be grandma Walton.
According to IMDb, that episode is rated as the most popular by people who participate in opinion polls about old TV shows. I just saw it last week. Still funny.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0512451/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_82
’53 Ford. Rear bumper and some of the chrome might be worth salvaging but that is about it. Looks to have been there there the last 40-50 years.
Yep, 1953 Ford Customline.
“It has a wonderful patina…”
Um, no. It’s rust. And it’s awful.
Isn’t “wonderful patina” a oxymoron?
This is right by my house I live in Fountain Hills Arizona bunch of old cars like this up by the river North of town, people would drive them till they stopped left in the desert, made good target practice when I was a kid
1953 ford customline sedan
Probably a Mainline, but agree its a 1953.
My great aunt Stella will come back to life before that ol’ Ford does and she’s been dead for at least a hundred years.
I’ve seen many, many cars like this in the deserts, mountains, and washes of AZ myself in the past 40 years. A lot of them have disappeared in the last 15-20 years with cleanups, the occasional crazy-high scrap steel prices, etc. but there are still some out there. In years past they were sometimes used/buried along the sides of creek beds to control erosion.
I’ve occasionally picked parts for them myself if needed. The cupholders in my Bronco are from a late model Dodge pickup that someone ditched in a deep canyon in central AZ about 15 years ago. In ’83, we scavenged some chrome off an old Buick down off a mine tailings pile that my friend’s dad used for a ’50 Buick he was restoring.
Certainly noble to try and clean this stuff up.
1953 Mercury Meteor
I was hiking along a river in Colorado last year and found this, have no idea how it got there!
Cars are found in the strangest places. That’s what I like about BF.
Bob
I wish I had a nice clear picture of this to put in a large frame. That is very cool. Thanks Robert White
I don’t know… ok like it ran off the road to me and down a bluff, or hit something.. not so strange really?
It shouldn’t be too hard to restore, all the wood is in great shape!
Some of the pictures indicate that this car was on fire at one point look at the pic of the pass doors. I say leave it there. It will rust away in time. Not much of an environmental impact at this point all that’s there is metal.
I never could understand people’s desire to have these hauled to the scrap yard. I agree, very little environmental impact, probably none, would cause more environmental damage getting in there and hauling it out. As is it gives hikers something to marvel over and wonder about.
Indeed. Leave her be. As Canadian Mark and Davis mentioned, she will rust away in time, and cause more damage to Mother Earth to remove than to leave alone.
I always find such discoveries fascinating while hiking or riding my XR650R. They make for wonderful waypoints, diversions/distractions and excellent wildlife habitat.
Most interesting, bullet holes.
Nephews auto was could in New Mexico outback.
Bullet holes, blood all over interior, but no body, other than autos. Set on fire but went out.
Drug runner and lower than low, I guess cops figured no use looking for body; waste of time.
And I agree.
At least the auto was hauled to scrap yard.
Maybe a ‘Shine’ runner ( :
No, I do not believe that you have seen worse cars than this brought back from dead.
Yes, cars in worse shape have certainly been brought back.
For example, have you ever heard of the famous “Studebaker Graveyard”? It was an area in the woods on Studebaker’s campus where the company would dump and leave various prototype vehicles. About half a century after the company’s demise, one of the bigger Studebaker clubs pulled a one-of-a-kind woody station wagon prototype out of there and rebuilt it (using as many of its original parts that they could, mainly the top half). That car was certainly in worse shape than the one in question. I believe it resides in a museum now.
Here is that wagon today, it’s in the National Studebaker Museum in south Bend, Indiana. Saw it last year when I attended the Packard Club National Meet.
Yes, there it is! Thanks, Bill.
Such a beautiful car. I hope that more of those Studebaker prototypes make it out of the woods one day!
Original Uber?
Maybe it’s that Ford sedan that ” Hubcaps” Lesh sold Barney Fife. Easy to restore this one, remove that one good chrome trim piece and then slide a nice Ford behind it.
Have to wonder just how vehicles got resting places such as this. Looking at the pictures, the terrain looks way too rocky for it to have been driven there, and yet it clearly was.
You Tube is littered with videos of cars being reclaimed from their final resting spots. One team used a Bobcat to carefully unearth an almost completely-buried “oval-window” VW.
But then again 40-50 yrs ago, that terrain looked completely different.
It ain’t a Mercury. Merc tail lights arn’t round.
yup has to be a Ford. I came home from the hospital in a ’54 Merc which had a large red lens versus this ’53 with its smaller lens in a larger chrome bezel.
I’ve got a pix around here somewhere…….save it for the Barnfinds 54 Merc.
Some unhappy car owner took that thing out in the woods and shot it in the head.
Tail lights give it away as a Ford . If it was a Porsche it’d be gone already.
If it was in a wash, could it have been swept downstream in a flash flood? Certainly looks too beat up to be driven there.
This car brings back memories. 52-54 Ford were hot commodities when I was in high school in the early 1960’s. Cheap and available and 55-57 Chevys were still too expensive. I think that this one is either a 52 or 53. Side trim is wrong for a 54. The side trim is also wrong for a Mainline. Mainlines had very little chrome side trim.
I’ve seen cars in better condition going to the crusher.
Its a 1953 ford customline sedan. Rear side chrome tells all.
’53 Ford
I saw the taillights and thought it was a Ford, but the badge on the side IDs it (to me, anyway) as a Merc.
Sorry guys I think Phil Q has the nearest right answer. Lots good guesses and possibilities but if he isn’t right my next best gues is it is a crossbreed. The Canadian Meteor or Ford and I don’t remember if that translated to U.S Mercury or not but the Canadain version had a unique grille and bumper compsed of the 53 Mercury taillights and side trim more like the U.S 53 Ford the side trim being a bit different and to my memory theCanadian Version back door trim was not like this which is US Customline. By the same token there is that definite shadow of Mainline trim on that fender. That fits US Mainline only which had NO side trim!!. The Canadian versions had the same dash as the US Mercury. The Canadian versions had unique hood trim and ornament. Also I think the Canadain versions had the larger 255 CID v/8 flathead of the Mercury instead of the 239 version of the US Ford. That Front bumper and grille and possibly hood is definitely Canadian. I think it is possibly an old 53 US Ford Custoline with Canadian parts or just the opposite. So it is a combination of them all . Now for the record, the black 4 door in Andy Griffith that Barney bought was NONE of the Above. It was a 54 Customline modified by the famous US used car refurbishment trick of the day called “Packing the tranny and rear end with “Sawdust” quitens those gears down great for a while and the automatics when the seals were pouring fluid too much, it is unbelievable what packing the lower end with “KOTEX” would do for a period. I will leave it to you to figure what country or state that ingenuity came from!!!.Owned a number of 52-54 Fords and Merc’s so know the differences but always thought the Canadian versions were more attractive. Google them and check them out
doesn’t look like a barn find…..more like a bomb find
It is a Vertified NRA chew toy Ford.
Give it back to them or they will sue you
Definitely not a Merc.I owed several back in the day until I could afford a Chevy. Looks like a 52-54 Ford.
On a hike about 15 years ago, on an old woods road, in NH, we came across a Frazier in a little bit better condition, but not much, no glass, interior shot, all rust all over. Town forbade outside storage of unregistered motor vehicles, so this was well out of sight. Kaisers are around, but I had never seen a Frazier before, in person, or one since, and I have been to dozens of auto museums and antique car meets. The land was being sold to a conservation organization and the carcass of the car went off to the crusher. A full EPA hazardous waste investigation was avoided somehow, it was going to cost $10,000 or so to see if any oil, or gasoline, or antifreeze, or battery acid, or transmission or rear end fluid had dripped into the ground, and if so, have the dirt dug up and sent 600 miles to Rochester NY to be burned. So catch those drips from your old buggies in case EPA gets its powers and staff back, you cannot afford to fight them.
Looks like a 35 mercury
The ad for this car says “ran when it was parked.”
The badge on the trunklid that we’ve been trying to read isn’t the brand or series name. When you bought the optional Ford-O-Matic or Overdrive trans, Ford put a scriipt badge on the trunklid to let everyone know. The side trim is 53 Ford Customline or Crestline. Series name was on the front fender chrome strips, which are gone.
That broken badge has left a trace of the black paint that is fooling us also.See where it has been twisted around to the correct orientation.
Whatever it is how the heck did it get there, not exactly a 4 x 4 or a paved roadway???
My theory is flash flood in the wash.
It will all come out in the wash!
Anybody that thinks this thing can be fixed back up is quite optimistic. I see nothing salvageable here.
What about the ‘roadrunner’ in the trunk?
52 mercury otherwise there would not be a mercury badge on it
one that sold in canda