Building a 1960 Mercury Park Lane convertible
Posted: Sat 22. Feb 2014, 15:13
Hello, as this is my first post here on this forum I would like to say that even if I am new here, I am not at all new to MEL cars. A few years ago I did a huge restoration job on a 59 Park Lane convertible that was more or less a pile of rust and dirt when I bought it outside Chicago back in 1999 and that took me about 6 years to finish. Here is a couple of pictures of that car.
The car is mostly done here and looking pretty good.
Back in 2007 I needed to free up some space for other projects and sold the 59. When I bought the 59 I was actually looking for a 60 Park Lane convertible to restore, so in 2002 I found one for sale in Michigan for $2000. Unfortunately that car was terrible rusty as well, (what could I expect for that kind of money?) but since I also had a much better 60 Park Lane 2d ht I decided to go for it and make one car out of both. OK, here are a few pictures of what I managed to do in the summer of 2002.
The convertible just arrived Norway in June 2002
Going down in pieces and becoming a donor car. The lower 8 inches of this car was totally rusted out, but everything above that was in incredible nice condition. Probably caused by the Michigan salty roads?
My hardtop is becoming a convertible. All the convertible parts had been removed from the rusty convertible by drilling out the factory spot welds and then transplanted into the hardtop body so it would be near impossible to see that this car body was a hardtop. Some people would prefer to take the good parts from the hat parts car and transplant them over to the convertible, but in this case I think that would have made a not so good result in the end.
Body conversion almost done
Then nothing happened. Every year I said next car to be restored is my 60, but every time I thought I should get time for it something else came up and the 60 ended up sitting with a heavier and heavier layer of dust covering it.
Here you can see the 60 sitting behind a couple of other cars I've been restoring.
OK, so lets move forward to December 2013
The 59 after about a year of body workThe car is mostly done here and looking pretty good.
Back in 2007 I needed to free up some space for other projects and sold the 59. When I bought the 59 I was actually looking for a 60 Park Lane convertible to restore, so in 2002 I found one for sale in Michigan for $2000. Unfortunately that car was terrible rusty as well, (what could I expect for that kind of money?) but since I also had a much better 60 Park Lane 2d ht I decided to go for it and make one car out of both. OK, here are a few pictures of what I managed to do in the summer of 2002.
The convertible just arrived Norway in June 2002
Going down in pieces and becoming a donor car. The lower 8 inches of this car was totally rusted out, but everything above that was in incredible nice condition. Probably caused by the Michigan salty roads?
My hardtop is becoming a convertible. All the convertible parts had been removed from the rusty convertible by drilling out the factory spot welds and then transplanted into the hardtop body so it would be near impossible to see that this car body was a hardtop. Some people would prefer to take the good parts from the hat parts car and transplant them over to the convertible, but in this case I think that would have made a not so good result in the end.
Body conversion almost done
Then nothing happened. Every year I said next car to be restored is my 60, but every time I thought I should get time for it something else came up and the 60 ended up sitting with a heavier and heavier layer of dust covering it.
Here you can see the 60 sitting behind a couple of other cars I've been restoring.
OK, so lets move forward to December 2013