Being Mercury’s base model for 1965, this 1965 Mercury Monterey Marauder is one sweet car. I’m sorry to use/overuse the word sweet, but I already overuse the words cool and fantastic. All three fit here. This sweet, cool, and fantastic mercury Monterey Marauder is on Craigslist (if the listing goes away, it can be found here) in Redwood Falls, Minnesota, about two hours west of Minneapolis. The seller is asking $3,500 for this baby, bring a friend and drive it home if you live fairly close by.
This car looks pretty complete to me, which is nice because some body parts, especially that grille, are almost impossible to find. The car also looks solid. I’m not sure if it’s a Minnesota car or not or if it has had bodywork in the past. I’m assuming that it has by the mismatched body panels and it has been painted red at some point in its history, unfortunately – it was originally light blue. If it were the other way around, blue with a red interior it would be great, sort of a flat-nosed, ham-fisted Maserati look. Why was it repainted, and in a different color, no less? Nobody knows, maybe not even the seller who is now a legend because of his/her short description: “runs needs paint”. Not even a single capital letter or punctuation was used; clean and simple. Three short words, the classic Minnesota Norwegian bachelor farmer, as Garrison Keillor might say.
The Monterey was the base model and Marauder was a trim level within each of Mercury’s three model designations. It’s a bit confusing, but I’m also confused by people who wear their pants down around mid-thigh level and by The Kardashian Bunch. Mercury’s next level up would have been the Montclair and at the top was the Park Lane. I’m not sure if I can think of cooler, sweeter, or more fantastic model names for a car! Jamie wrote about a mid-level 1965 Mercury Montclair Marauder last year and boy, for another $2,500, that car would have been hard to pass up. That sale ended with no bids at $6,000, that’s crazy! If you look at that car, you can see that the mid-level Montclair included side trim.
Here’s where the sweetness ends, or maybe not if a person knows a good upholsterer or they happen to be one themself, as a Norwegian bachelor farmer might say. This crazy color combo is like a Red Hot jawbreaker with a blueberry on the inside. I don’t understand why anyone would paint a car red just to have it red on the outside, but again, Kardashians and low-hanging pants. I believe that this car would have originally been “Blue Ice”, sort of a medium blue, and hopefully it won’t be a deal-breaker to bring it back to its original glory. As you can see from the lone interior photo, the windshield is cracked but our friends at RockAuto list one for $170! Can that be right? That’s cheap! There will be other work to do on the interior, the door panels are toasted on top, we don’t have a clue what the back seat looks like, the headliner is a mystery as is the trunk, etc. But hey, it looks like it comes with an extra steering wheel! Both a 3-speed and a 4-speed manual transmission were available but this car has the Merc-O-Matic automatic.
For being a seller of so few words, to have included an engine photo makes up for 95% of any past indiscretions that they may have had. The base engine was a 390 cubic-inch V8 with 250 hp and 266 hp would have been an option, which this car has because it has the automatic transmission. The 250 hp version would have been on the base, manual transmission car. The Park Lane got a 300 hp 390 as standard. Now, if this car would have had the available 427 V8 with 425 hp and a 4-speed, this ad wouldn’t still be up on the ol’ interwebs.. All we know about this one is that it “runs”, so that’s a good thing. I think this is a really great-looking car with the emotionless-yet-knowing-that-it-could-eat-your-lunch look of that grille with those wide-open shark headlight eyes. A note to car designers: emotionless shark grilles are so much more scary, and cool, than the fake, frowning, faux-aggressive “scary-grille-cars” of today. This front end treatment is SO much meaner looking than the poseur, scowling-faced, frowning cars of today, with their “oh-I’m-so-mean-you’d-better-get-out-of-my-latte-drinking-way” front ends.. zzzzzzz.. Give me this flat-nosed, eyes-wide-open ’65 Merc any day of the week. But, I don’t have any strong feelings about it.. Have any of you owned a Marauder? This is the year that I’d want, which one would you choose?
“Runs, needs paint” Are you kidding me? I think this wins the shortest ad description contest. Looks like a little TLC and a paint job would go a long ways on this baby.
We say the word “Marauder” in this car with little connection who “Marauder’s” were. They were not very nice people, and raped and plundered villages I believe in France. This was the last year for the Marauder, until ’69, when it came back as a pretty impressive car, X-100, but at this time, I believe it was just a trim package, available across the Mercury lineup. I liked these, because they didn’t have the “stacked headlights”, like on Ford products. These were very nice cars.
Extra steering wheel? Heck! They have an entire extra steering column! Make it into a driver’s ed car?
Maybe for the backseat driver?
This has potential to be a cool build. Lower the suspension, T-Bird buckets and console, LED’s on the blinkers and cornering lights, triple black.
I had a 65 Marauder back in the early part of 2000, bought it at an estate sale near Hillsboro, MO. for 1,500.00, it had been sitting in a garage for about 20 years I was told, it had a couple of tarps over it which helped, but the owners had a ton of stuff piled on top of it, the interior had a family of raccoons living in so the interior was chewed and clawed up.
I was told they had parked it because of engine issues, that they could not figure out, it turned out to be a broken oil pump/distributor shaft. It had a 427 with a 4 speed tranny, it was the original black and I was able to buff out 90% of it, the one place that was not able was where a trap seams had rubbed a bare spot on the trunk deck, well after a few weeks of cleaning, I was able to get it running and stopping, new oil pump shaft and all new electrical, new fluids, belts, hoses, flushed the fuel tank. cleaned the radiator and had the interior redone but a local guy and had it at a car show in less than 4 months,
I had a guy walk up to it and asked me if I wanted to sell it and I sold it for 15K, funny part about selling it at the car show, I had to call home to get somebody to come get me because I drove it to the show!!!!!! But it was sweet car, sometimes I wished I had never sold it, because it made a nice show with it sitting next to my 65 Galaxy, which I still have!!!
I wonder if I could talk the wife into a trip this weekend!!!!!!
That, Big Mike, is one great story! We all dream about having something like that happening. Well done, sir.
Missing front turn signal lenses appear to be a common thing on these Mercury’s…I wonder how hard to find are they, and/or do any re-pops exist? I always thought that the 69 X-100 was a terrific car! :-)
Loved my 69 X100,rear brakes weren’t right so I could smoke rear tires at stop signs.It had 3 bullet holes where someone had used it for target practice,but they missed the glass and trim.
We had a 1965 Colony Park as a kid. It was Aqua Marine Blue. It was a rocket ship compared to my Dad’s 1947 Chrysler he had just before this one. Rust killed most of these cars.I’d love to have this but the Trim and door panels would be hard to source.
Put a photo of a before and after big Mike, would be very cool to see.
https://www.bangshift.com/forum/forum/bangshift/swap-meet/check-this-out/24033-1965-mercury-montclair-breezeway-cruiser-10-000
I had a ’65 Montclair Breezeway that I got from my Dad in ’68. Same color as this one. White leather interior. That 390 pulled it pretty good. Loved the breezeway. We could smoke in it in HS, and my Dad didn’t pick up on it. Yeah, even though he gave it to me, he stilled checked it out. Traded it for a ’69 GTO in ’69, Sr. year. The Goat had a little more giddy – up, but you couldn’t beat the ride of that Merc.
What ever became of the gto?
Grrrrr, don’t ask.
After a fun filled and all expenses paid trip to Asia by the US government, I was stationed at Fort Geo. G.Meade in MD. I flew home on leave, and drove it from Mpls. back to the base. Sadly, I threw the timing chain. I was living off post, so I needed a car immediately, so I ” traded it ” for a new ’72 Nova. Of course, the dealership wholesaled it.The body and interior were like new. A young guy at a local garage picked it up for peanuts and rebuilt it. I saw it parked at the service station where the guy worked as a mechanic, so I stopped in and got the full skinny on it. He sure loved that car. Wish I had it back !
This is the 65 marauder I picked up a few weeks ago for $3500