Retro Review: Mercury Turnpike Cruiser
The futuristic 1950s Mercury Turnpike Cruiser had an odd name and even odder features, proving there is such a thing as too much innovation.
Revolutionary for Revolution’s Sake
Space Age design harkening to a gleaming, stress-free future was all the rage in the middle and late 1950s, as was tossing “O-Matic” on to anything vaguely automated. The Mercury Turnpike Cruiser, an example of both tendencies, was intended to be the mid-level brand’s new flagship, replete with the latest and greatest, the most novel and futuristic of features and gadgetry Ford designers and engineers could concoct.
The Turnpike Cruiser certainly was innovative. The only problem? Many of those innovations, though compelling, were not especially significant on a practical level. Not unlike its Ford contemporary, the Edsel, the Turnpike Cruiser was an assortment of interesting ideas whose sum ended up being less than its parts, at least in the eyes of consumers. As a result, like the Edsel, the Turnpike Cruiser was short lived, its brief, two-model-year run concluding in 1959.
Though not a commercial success, the Mercury Turnpike Cruiser was a unique if peculiar car that makes for a conversation-starting classic today. Below we explore this unusual car’s many distinctive quirks.
Stylish Experiments
The Mercury Turnpike Cruiser began as a concept design by Ford’s John Najjar in 1954. Najjar, if you’ll recall, would go on to work on the Mustang prototype design, along with many Lincoln designs including the Futura concept (later modified to create the original Batmobile). Ford executives liked Najjar’s design enough to go ahead with a full concept car, the XM-Turnpike Cruiser, in 1956. Of the concept, Mercury proclaimed, “XM-Turnpike Cruiser is not merely a ‘dream’ car … it is a full-scale, fully operative automotive styling laboratory.”
Indeed, a styling lab it was. Further design work on the XM concept was penned by Larry Shinoda, today most famed for his work at GM, including the C2 Stingray’s design. Shinoda added all sorts of cool innovations and styling flourishes to the XM-Turnpike Cruiser’s design, including the car’s large, scalloped side channel trim pieces (scaled down for the final production car). Another of the concept’s many oddities and futuristic features was the automatic retracting butterfly glass roof panels. The XM concept was built by Ghia in Italy at a cost of $80,0000.
Brief But Spectacular
The 1957 debut of the Mercury Turnpike Cruiser was encapsulated in the company’s tag line proclaiming the new halo car for the Mercury brand was “Straight Out of Tomorrow.” The new car was indeed forward-looking, retaining and even building on the concept’s innovations.
Among its peculiarities, the Turnpike Cruiser featured slightly downsized versions of Shinoda’s scalloped trim which terminated in scallop-shaped taillights and came in anodized-gold. These scalloped trim pieces were adopted throughout much of the Mercury lineup for 1957. Gold was a repeated motif, showing up in the car’s trim and badging as well. Other novelties included the “Quadribeam” dual headlights and the “Breezeway” retractable rear window, another design that made its way throughout the Mercury lineup for years to come.
Perhaps the most unique of the Turnpike Cruiser’s attributes was its curving windshield which terminated in a pair of air-intakes atop the right and left A-pillars featuring faux-radio antennae (the real radio antenna was situated on the passenger side frond fender). The optional Continental tire kit added one more oddity to the Turnpike Cruiser, a greatly elongated rear bumper.
For the 1957 model year, the Turnpike Cruiser was powered by a 368 cu.-in. V8 making 290 horsepower. This was paired with Mercury’s “Merc-O-Matic” push-button automatic three-speed transmission. For 1958, the Turnpike Cruiser was given more V8 options in a pair of Marauder V8s measuring 383 and 430 cubic inches, respectively. A triple two-barrel version, dubbed the “Super Marauder” was rated to 400 horsepower.
Too Far Ahead of Its Time?
Even with all the “futuristic” features, the Mercury Turnpike Cruiser failed to catch on with car buyers, and 1957 proved to be a particularly bad sales year for the Mercury brand. The additional V8 options failed to entice buyers and after the 1958 model year the Turnpike Cruiser was discontinued in 1959 when the Park Lane succeeded it as the new top-of-the-line Mercury. Despite its short and inauspicious run, the Turnpike Cruiser is today one of the rarer and more unique classics of the late 1950s, evocative both of its time and an imagined, unrealized future.
