Judging by the plethora of ****Ugly cars there must have been some very bad dope around in those days.
For better or worse, Frank Maratta's Merc has always stuck in my mind as a horrible example of 'customizing'. Every year for several years it appeared in the magazines (little pages at the time) for the show season with new mods. Never saw any that could have been called an 'improvement'. Quite the opposite. Mr Maratta may have been a very nice man, but a stylist....not so much....IMO, of course. As for the subject vehicle of this thread, my very first thought was "that MUST be from an East Coast creator". Ray
Rumor has it that when that car was s****ed they melted the lead out of it and filled a 55 gallon drum. Some math wiz will run the numbers and see what that total weight would be. Bob
I think I might be a little skeptical of that number. Can you imagine losing 55 1 gallon cans of Bondo on one car? Not to mention the amount that gets cheese grated off?
On one of the Barris`s cars(not the one below), they removed the dip in the doors by filling it full of lead. You can`t do that with bondo. Well, I guess you could. How many pounds of lead would that take.
The real tragedy is the Maratta car was made from a super rare 1939 Mercury 4 door convertible. I have seen a picture of all the "junk" he cut off it piled in a corner of the shop.
Same response I use often give on Barnfinds......Sometimes what happens in the barn should stay in the barn.
The Jalopy Journal
