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?
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