Saw this advertised, thought it was cool. Figured you all might get a kick out of it - don't see many of these around!

55 mercury van - Saskatchewan Collector Cars For Sale - Kijiji Saskatchewan Canada.

 

I have to be honest, I dig that. I'd love to get ahold of that...

 

Hmmm. 20" top chop...

 

I read somewhere recently that Mercury re-badged Fords were only sold in Canukland. Is that true?

 

Yes, that is correct.

 

1946/68: FoMoCo made Mercury & Ford trucks only for the Canadian market and assembled them in the Oakville, Ontario Canada Truck plant (that Ford is still using today).

Also made Canadian only Ford & Mercury Passengere Cars. GM & Chrysler did the same things. These vehicles could not be sold in the US when new.

The reason had to do with tariffs between the US/Canada which went away in 1967.

The 'van' is a P Series Parcel Delivery. Ford offered these 1951/76. During this time, there were P100's, P350's, P400's & P500's.

UPS & myriad bakeries used these, so they became known as "bread trucks." The rolling chassis was used for Motor Homes like the Condor.

Many were later converted to campers by their owners (hippies in many cases). A 'small town' Ford dealer I worked at in the 1960's almost went bankrupt because of these trucks.

The used car manager, Al Pratt (soon to be known as Al P Ratt) bought 500 (!) from Frito-Lay, repainted them, but did little else, then sold them with a ONE year warranty.

It wasn't long before the worn out terds were being towed in with myriad mechanical problems. The dealer lost...on average, over 2 grand on each one....in 1960's dollars, which would be close to 8 grand each today.

In late 1967, the dealer had to merge with a competiting dealer a coupla miles away, because of Al P Ratt's stupidity.

 

The Canadian "Mercury" passenger cars were interesting: (I was born and raised in Buffalo, a drive across the Peace Bridge from Canada. The border crossing was such an uneventful routine that we often drove over to Canada for a Chinese dinner, Ft. Erie on the other side had a population concentration of newly immigrated Chinese. Canadians and US citizens often crossed the border to fill their cars up on gas depending on which the currency exchange favored at the moment.) rather than being built on the larger US Mercury body shell they were retrimmed (grill, taillights and side trim as well as badging) US Ford passenger car bodies. The trim pieces were sought after as simple inexpensive bolt on "customizing" parts for Fords in the US.

To put the dealer's warantee costs in perspective in ND's story, 1999.00 was the retail list price of the new Falcon in 1960.