Junkyard Find: 1973 Mercury Montego MX Brougham
We’re on a 1973 roll here in Junkyard Find land, with a ’73 Luxury LeMans yesterday and a ’73 Super Beetle the day before, so I’m going to keep it going with another car from the year everything went to hell. The Montego was the blinged-out, gingerbread-encrusted sibling of the Ford Torino during this era, so it made sense that Mercury would sell a Brougham edition.
As can be seen from this car’s surroundings, I shot these photos at the Brain Melting Colorado Yard.
This car was locked, so I couldn’t open the hood and take a look at the engine. This car could be purchased with a 92-horsepower 250 L6, a 137-horsepower 302 V8, and an assortment of 351C, 400M, and 429 V8s with distressingly low power ratings and OPEC-gratifying thirst.
Still, I think these things are cool. I’m sure Sajeev agrees.
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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Love it, like others said, looks ready for the road. Drove a Pea Green version of this with a white vinyl top for a while. The drivers seat springs were shot so you sat low and could barely see out over that long hood. Would love to get my hands on that '66 Merc coupe sitting next to it too.
What goes unreported on this rag of a site is that the 250 inline six was really rated at 150 plus horsepower before 1972 - afterwards the entire industry was operating under new SAE horsepower reporting standards. I can attest that in a 1969 Mustang, a 250 six-cylinder was no slug. Once more this site is less about truth and more about someone's ego.