Junkyard Find: 1965 Mercury Park Lane Breezeway
Of all the crazy ideas to come out of Dearborn in the 1960s, the Breezeway option on big Mercury cars is one of my favorites. You had a rear-canted back window that rolled up and down, providing a hurricane of wind through the car at speed, and no doubt enhancing the passengers’ intake of Vitamin CO. It made no sense, but so what? Not surprisingly, mid-60s Montereys and Park Lanes (the Mercury-ized Ford Galaxie), aren’t worth much in beat condition these days (nice ones are another story), but I still wasn’t expecting to find this one in a Northern California wrecking yard last month.
Mercury really went overboard on the wild trim and weird gingerbread during this period, but it ended up looking pretty good.
Here’s a good example of Northern California rust; the quarters and floors are fine, but the places where rainwater pools during the winter end up rusting through. This car probably sat outside for a decade or three.
There’s not much demand for 390 parts these days, though someone— probably a Mustang guy— has grabbed the carburetor and valve covers off this one.
Let’s return to the trim around the Breezeway window. Such style!
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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"Full instrumentation? What is this blasphemy!" says the man who drives an Oldsmobile.
Actually the power back window is not that bad of an idea. My luxo F150 has it and I love it. Many pickups have now. Didn't the early Tundra have a huge window too?