Seeing a 1974 Mercury Comet four-door sedan was my first car, how could I not stop on this Facebook Marketplace find and blog about it? This one is a 1976 and is gold on the outside where mine was red and the interior a similar golden hue where mine was a dreary black. Aside from that, same car. Let the self loathing begin.
The search for my "first car" began in earnest shortly after I got my driver's license in the fall of 1981. With a modest budget of around $1,000, money I somehow culled together working at Burger King the previous summer, my choices were quite slim. While I wanted a sexy, V-8 powered, General Motors personal luxury car, ala Monte Carlo, Cutlass, Grand Prix, etc, a thousand bucks wouldn't cover a third of the price of admission to that tony club. Down in my low rent district, I was stuck with dorky trash like what I ended up with. To this day, I swear, my first car is the reason why I have never driven another four-door sedan as my daily driver. Well, save for a time in the late 2000's when I was semi-forced by my wife to take over her 2002 Ford Taurus SEL but I digress. Soon as I could I pushed that thing into Lake Eerie, metaphorically of course, and got my "gone but not forgotten", Dale Earnhardt Chevrolet Monte Carlo SS.
My current ride is a 2009 Toyota RAV4 and while it may have four-doors, actually five, it's a crossover SUV so it doesn't count as a sedan. I swear, the stuff we convince ourselves of so we can sleep at night.
Ah, but this isn't your typical Mercury Comet four-door like mine was but one that has been worked over. Apparently big time too. I knew something was up with the off-set, heavy-duty breather poking up through the hood that's resplendent with a racing stripe and hood pins. I know, I first thought it was a cheesy hood-scoop too. Hood pins mean power!
It's off-set because it's a fixed to a carburetor that's feeding the intake manifold of the bane of Comet's mere existence, Ford's 250 cubic-inch, inline six. While a smooth if dutiful not-so-little motor, in stock form it made 91 net horsepower and 190 foot pounds of torque. Yes. Ninety-one horsepower. I kid not when I say that my 17.5-horsepower, 38-inch Craftsman garden tractor has a better power-to-weight ratio.
Who knows what this thing is making. There isn't much disclosed in the ad about what has been done down there but there is a cottage industry for inline-six enthusiasts. I think I see a four-barrel under the breather and what I have to imagine is a performance intake. She got a "cam"? Who knows. I know I see headers, a Davis Unified, high energy Ignition (D.U.I), performance coil and who knows what else. I say this is probably good for 150-200 net horsepower. In a car weighing a lamb's breath under a ton-and-a-half, no doubt this literal golden oldie is quite quick if not fast. "Fast" being relative, of course.
The go-fast goodies probably added at a substantial savings over swapping in a hot-rodded 302 or whatever; Comet and Maverick four-doors with the V-8 from the factory were rare. The big, heavy Ford Windsor engine's additional 47-horsepower and 56 pounds of torque over the inline six mostly lost on having to haul the extra weight of it around. That's why souping up granny's sixer makes a lot of sense. And the car will still handle better as well.
The poster of the ad discloses that the C4 automatic transmission slips but shifts and needs what they claim is a cheap rebuild. Seeing they want $6,500 for this thing I wonder how cheap that will be. I guess all their money went into cutting a hole in the hood. They do claim there's a lot of money "in this car".
My Comet was the worst car I ever had and was a fitting "first car" for me considering how miserable my childhood and teen years were. Why shouldn't my first car have sucked as well? My Comet didn't have a bushing in its suspension that wasn't worn out, had a plywood paneling floor because it had rotted out, the transmission died within a week of my purchasing it and the best was it inhaled gas like a V-8 powered car would. I made amends with myself ditching it just over a year after I bought it replacing it with, drum roll - the poor man's Chevrolet Monte Carlo, a Chrysler Cordoba.
This thing? Well, at the end of the day, all you have is a four-door Comet. Albeit probably a way more fun one to drive, slipping tranny and all, than what I had. Poster of the ad cuts to the quick that if "four-doors" aren't your think to keep on scrolling. You got that right, brother but if this was closer to me, it's a good three-and-half-hours away, I might just waste their time kicking its tires. If for no other reason than for old time's sake.
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