Junkyard Find: 1975 Mercury Comet Sedan

Murilee Martin
by Murilee Martin

A Maverick in a junkyard is a rare sight indeed these days, so you can imagine my surprise when I found this badge-engineered Mercury Maverick just a few rows down from yesterday’s ’75 Ford Maverick Junkyard Find. There wasn’t much difference between the Maverick and the Comet, though the Comet was marketed as being somewhat classier.

You aren’t going to see a sticky vinyl interior in this weird green color these days.

Check out these futuristic taillights!

The 1975 Ford Maverick four-door listed at $3,025 with 200-cubic-inch six-cylinder engine. The 1975 Mercury Comet four-door listed at $3,236, with the same engine. It’s hard to imagine the tiny margin of bragging rights the Comet might bestow over the Maverick, but some felt the extra $211 was worth it.

The 1992 Sci-Fi Channel button on the inside of the C pillar is a nice bit of personalization.









Murilee Martin
Murilee Martin

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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  • Carl Kolchak Carl Kolchak on Mar 30, 2012

    1st new car I remember my parents buying was a 74 Comet. They paid extra for the Ginger Glamour Metallic paint.Car always looked great on the exterior, but as the car aged, the brown paint was fitting for the car. Slow, lousy mileage, crummy interior and squeaked as it went down the road.

  • Bill mcgee Bill mcgee on Mar 31, 2012

    In my memory although the late seventies was certainly a time for odd colorful interiors it seems that Ford stuck with this particularly odd shade of green longer than anyone else .Daddy had a 1969 Pontiac Custom S with a similiar color interior but as I recall by the mid seventies GM offerred only a much softer color green I remember seeing in somebody's Malibu . A coworker had a '76 Montego sedan with the same color vinyl interior as did a college friend's 1976 MustangII Ghia . Both were pale yellow with that odd olive color vinyl top, a color combo I also remember seeing only on Ford products of this era . Sure miss all those ill conceived but interesting interior/ exterior color schemes .

  • TheEndlessEnigma These cars were bought and hooned. This is a bomb waiting to go off in an owner's driveway.
  • Kwik_Shift_Pro4X Thankfully I don't have to deal with GDI issues in my Frontier. These cleaners should do well for me if I win.
  • Theflyersfan Serious answer time...Honda used to stand for excellence in auto engineering. Their first main claim to fame was the CVCC (we don't need a catalytic converter!) engine and it sent from there. Their suspensions, their VTEC engines, slick manual transmissions, even a stowing minivan seat, all theirs. But I think they've been coasting a bit lately. Yes, the Civic Type-R has a powerful small engine, but the Honda of old would have found a way to get more revs out of it and make it feel like an i-VTEC engine of old instead of any old turbo engine that can be found in a multitude of performance small cars. Their 1.5L turbo-4...well...have they ever figured out the oil dilution problems? Very un-Honda-like. Paint issues that still linger. Cheaper feeling interior trim. All things that fly in the face of what Honda once was. The only thing that they seem to have kept have been the sales staff that treat you with utter contempt for daring to walk into their inner sanctum and wanting a deal on something that isn't a bare-bones CR-V. So Honda, beat the rest of your Japanese and Korean rivals, and plug-in hybridize everything. If you want a relatively (in an engineering way) easy way to get ahead of the curve, raise the CAFE score, and have a major point to advertise, and be able to sell to those who can't plug in easily, sell them on something that will get, for example, 35% better mileage, plug in when you get a chance, and drives like a Honda. Bring back some of the engineering skills that Honda once stood for. And then start introducing a portfolio of EVs once people are more comfortable with the idea of plugging in. People seeing that they can easily use an EV for their daily errands with the gas engine never starting will eventually sell them on a future EV because that range anxiety will be lessened. The all EV leap is still a bridge too far, especially as recent sales numbers have shown. Baby steps. That's how you win people over.
  • Theflyersfan If this saves (or delays) an expensive carbon brushing off of the valves down the road, I'll take a case. I understand that can be a very expensive bit of scheduled maintenance.
  • Zipper69 A Mini should have 2 doors and 4 cylinders and tires the size of dinner plates.All else is puffery.
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