Mercury Cyclone Squeezes Every Drop of Octane from Summer
Owner: Alexander Brevik
Year, Make, and Model: 1969 Mercury Cyclone 351 Windsor
Location: Rakkestad, Østfold, Norway
Photographer: Trygve Sørli
I grew up with a family interested in cars. And all of my family drive Fords: Escorts, Granadas (European), Scorpios, Taunus’. My father currently owns a 1968 Mercury Cougar 392 stroker which he also uses for drag racing, so one could say cars and especially Fords are in my blood.
Always on the lookout for new projects, I stumbled over this Mercury for sale (online) and jumped on the phone. I went to have a look and it was just awesome. When I took it for a ride I knew that it was the car for me. I hadn’t seen one of these in this condition before. That and the fact that it’s rare made it even more appealing, I really like going to car meets and being the only one with this model.
The Cyclone is based on the Mercury Montego, and shares parts with the Ford Fairlane/Torino. Only 9143 Cyclones was produced in 1969, 5882 of those are non-Cobra Jet, like mine. Unfortunately for me, the Cobra Jet had a bigger engine and was more well-equipped.
Well maintained and looked after, the Cyclone had only 71,000 miles on the clock when I bought it. In 2000, it received a mild restoration with new paint, rims, and a retrimmed white leather interior. It was imported to Norway that year and I bought the car in 2013. It has matching numbers, a three-speed manual gearbox with column shift, stock 351 Windsor engine with Edelbrock performer intake, Holley four-barrel carb, and a custom twin exhaust. It’s currently sitting on American racing 7×15” BF Goodrich Radial TA 225/60 and I changed all of the bushings to polyurethane, and installed gas shocks and sport springs in the front. The rest is stock.
The car was repainted in the original color in 2000, but is a bit rough since it was done with a lot of the original trim and chrome (which needs some maintenance to be perfect) left on the car. Some edges are visible, but its nothing critical, so it’ll have to wait as I’m also restoring two more Fords: a 1982 Granada as well as a rare ’76 Cortina mk3 (both European).
When not enjoying the car’s looks in the garage during winter (to avoid humidity and all the salt applied to Norwegian roads in the winter), I love to cruise along on country roads, enjoying the attention grabbing V8 as often I can. After all, we’ve only got three months of summer here in Norway, so you have to squeeze every single drop of high octane out of it.
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