Junkyard Find: Customized Nightmare 1958 Ford
Everyone likes a nicely customized, lowrider-style 50s Detroit bomb, but sometimes the execution isn’t so great. Such is the case with this late-50s Ford— I’m going to say it’s a ’58— that I spotted in a Denver junkyard.
It’s been hacked up pretty well by someone that wanted the roof, but that just serves to expose the inner workings of this nightmare.
Like, say, the waterlogged, crudely-cut plywood interior.
Or the Pinto floor shifter and switch panels lifted from who-knows-what kind of car.
It’s hard to tell whether or not it ever drove under its own power with this configuration, but The Crusher doesn’t care about that. The Crusher just hungers for steel!
Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.
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Here is the two-door hardtop wagon version, called the Mercury Voyager. I think its handsome, and am amazed it survived. Its the only one I know of. http://www.57heaven.com/Images/mercuryvoyagerwagon.jpg I came across it about a decade ago quite by accident when I was looking for a nice old wagon to fix up. Couldn't afford it now either.
That shifter looks like it came from a Pinto/Mustang II