If you had an original Mercury Tailgate in perfect condition would it be possible to have metal ones reproduced by means of molds etc.

Is this to costly? What would be involved?

I think mine is a female,does anyone have a male Merc tailgate? Maybe we could do it this way!
Cheers

 

They are stamped not cast. There are ways to make dies for low-production runs but the tailgate is pretty thick steel so the dies are still going to be hefty. If you could buy Ford tailgates from someone who is making them, but get them before they stamp the FORD onto it, it might be reasonably priced, but I doubt there is much demand.

 

Are the '51-'52 Mercury tailgates different than the '48-'50 tailgates ? I know the M-68 are a different beast but I'm not up on the '51-'52. Like I said in an earlier post it is easy to turn a Ford tailgate into a Merc one IF you have the name plate to spot weld in.
Northern Classic pickups were making Mercury tailgates.
Greg M-47

 

The 51-52 Merc tailgates are different from the earlier ones. There's the latching differences that came with the bed style change in mid-50, same as the Ford, and the center raised section is wider than the outer two, where the earlier model has 3 even 'squares' since it was essentially a modified Ford gate. The Mercury got it's own stamping and the letters are larger and stamped into the gate itself, and no longer an add-on piece.

The Mercury tailgate that Northern Classic sells is for the 53-68 models. It's $425.

 

There's a thread on the HAMB board about shop press tooling. In one post a guy was stamping the Ford script into sheet metal. If you were ambitious enough you could stamp Mercury panels to be welded into Ford tailgates but that would take a lot of work, I don't if it'd be worth it.