Not even close............................it's a 1949 Delahaye Type 135 coachwork by french coachbuilder Faget Varnet
of course I was kidding about the austen a40, however I would never have guessed what it is,it looks expensive, as for the flames on the merc, I realize that it's not era correct to the 50 caddilac wheels and sombreros, but I love the attitude achieved with flames.However I may not go with flames cause black paint is able to present the attitude on its own without losing the 50s look, as for whether I run radial wide whites,,well all I can say is that I motor a lot of miles and they do work better even though they suffer in appearance.
Hey desotot, Yeah, I got that you were kiddin', and probably sholda picked that up in my reply I' not too brite At the end of the day, your Merc is gonna be killer given the flow of the chop, and the other extras! Mercs in jus about any colour have boxcars of ''attitude'' especially in black! The real job is not to produce another cliche. I get the drivability factor of the radials for your end use, but they sure are a vibe killer Great build, and good luck- " Meanwhyle, back aboard The Tainted pork "
scrap the flames, I have decided to run with 53 Buick trim, it,s all fitted and figured out, now I have to work on the the butterfly clips. I will post on what the issues are with the Buick trim and what has to be done to put it on a merc.For now here is a pic.
I decided to run a full lenght front fender moulding so the front fender piece was not changed in lenght. After looking at many pics and seeing different folks running this piece from short [ starting at the rear of the wheel opening to the front of the opening and and other cuts in between ] it was difficult to decide what to do because they all looked fine, the other decision was whether to stay close to the top of the wheel opening or raise it a little higher like on some of the car pics I have seen on the web. Finally I decided with the long and low profile. This also saved having to shorten that first trim piece.In laying out the pieces on the side of the car I realized I would have to notch the front fender so that the door piece could bypass the fender when the door opens, this is nescessary due to the fact that the moulding is almost a full inch thick at the peak compared to a stock mercury trim piece which is about a 1/4 inch thick. The 49-50 baby lincoln with the thick moulding has a notch in the front fender for this reason, fortunatly my car is not yet painted, I will have to weld the notch with the oxy acct for a nice smooth fusion. I also had to tap in the rear capped edge of this moulding to provide more clearance.
The door would require an extension because the buick door is about three inches shorter than the merc door, We had to make a choce on how to best do this with our abilities. After test welds on an extra piece of stainless we decided to go with a butt using a piece of stainless backing for a slip joint. This piece needed to be carefully cut and sanded to the right size and shape for a snug fit.We also had to mark and cut the pieces to the right sizes so we calculated this carefully.The mouldings are tapered so it was important to make sure the slip joint lenght was matched for a good fit, as well well needed straight lines so we set up a zip wheel in my old radial arm saw to do this. tape on the moulding gives us two parrallel cut lines, now we can cut the mouldings. here is the stainless piece for the slip joint, this will be tacked after so that the joint will stay nice and tight.
When we cut the extesion for the door piece we also made the cut for the quarter panel piece. This piece needed only to be capped so we now capped the door extension and the quarter piece, these were tigged.
The only thing now was that the bottom of the 1/4 moulding has a square piece that looked unfinshed so I looked in my stainless left over from other cars bucket in my leanto and found a single 54 olds rocker panel which had a similar character profile to the buick trim so I cut the ends of and used them to make a pair of stainless spears. don't know if we did this right but that is how we dunnit! Now to work and polish this stuff into twinkliness. Special thanks to my brother Bill for all his help and expertise!
so now I am going to figure my bumper arrangement, first I welded the rear bumper holes with the usual plate stud routine.Next I will use a 49 50 chev licence plate surround when I get my hands on one, willprobably order one from chevs of the 40s as they look like a natural adaption. still have to make up my mind on whether I will use a smoothed out stock bumper or modify this 54 desoto bumper, I prefer the desoto bumper but I have been known to change my mind at the last moment. The desoto bumper doesn't seem to clash with the merc rear bumper.
I still need a drivers side grill tooth as you can see and the bumper will need to be slightly v'd to work.
working on the bmpers, I finally made up my mind exactly.I had a pair of 56 olds holiday bumpers kicking around so I robbed the licence surround off the rear bumper and nipped andtrimmed it so it would fit the merc bumper.The nice thing about it is it is wide enough to cover the flat spot on the merc bumper.Here are some pics.
the front bumper has to give way to a 54 desoto bumper, the problem with the stock bumper is the bumperettes are to busy with all those grill teeth, and without the bumperettes the flat spot in the center of the bumper is simply to large, it is kind of hard to mix bumpers but the desoto bumper will look and fit good once I narrow it in the the center and put a 49 50 chev licence surround on it,, I think,, maybe.
Im really likin Youre Merc. The Nailhead is just too cool. But I gotta say that grill just looks outta place. Kinda has the buck tooth look. Other than that the car looks very good. FEDER
I like the front end!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I think it looks killer. Nice workmanship on the bright bits, regards, Rhys.
got the idea for the grill from this utube thing http://youtu.be/nZA7YY4m1-s my teeth will be set in a little farther and my grill bar should appear to float about a 1/4 " from the fenders
funny how I can look at something and think it looks great but the next time I look at it I have to spend more time on it. The first take the bottom outside corners are so square so I had to round them on my licence surround.
The Jalopy Journal
