At the end of August my good friend and famous pinstriper Anthony White and I took a ride up to where he was storing his bad *** chopped 49 merc. The car was built in the early 50s by Frank Maratta and was really showing its age. Anthony had gotten the engine compartment straightened out and painted while Slag had already done alot of structural metal work, helped him with the fire wall and front spash pan, but this was a few years ago and the car had been sitting ever since. The quarters were in pretty poor shape, as someone back in the day had tried to make fade aways out of nothing but mud (a nightmare to get off). I suppose it could have been worse and they could have done it with lead! After inspecting the car and coming to the conclusion it was just to cool of a vehicle to be sitting there I suggested he bring the car to my shop in Morristown NJ so we could straighten the rest of it out and get it in a state where it would be fun to cruise until he was ready to paint it. I started on it the begning of September and we are just finishing up on it. We started by going over all the mechanicals, brakes, new carb, fuel filter, plugs wires ect. got it running and drving better before straightening out the body. I thought I'd post some pics of it on here for everyone to check out. It has truely been a great time getting to work on a car with as much history and as much style as this one has to it. I hope everyone likes it and has nothing to say about the F'ing taillights. They werent our idea if you dont like them take it up with Frank Maratta! few updated pics of Ants merc comming along nicely.
Met Anthony a number of years ago in Rhinebeck..real nice guy. And the Merc, killer! Tail lights don't bug me one bit, and i think it's very cool they stayed as they were. Tony
Glad to hear it tony! The merc IS killer, i feel truly privileged and honored that myself and John Scaramella got to work on a true piece of east coast Kustom car history!
Funny about the taillights: Richard Zocchi had Frank DeRosa do "Cool '50's" taillights the same way! I always thought it was rank, never saw 'stacked' taillamps in the '50s...if I saw them on the Maratta Merc, I didn't remember. One pair looked so right! Two pair...More ain't always better. We're not shootin' dice here...
If memory serves me right, didn't the late Egon Necelis do something similar on one of his Mercs about 15-20 years ago ? Cool idea, and the body shape of the Merc flows with it. Jonnie King www.legends.thewwbc.net
I have been looking forward to see this one getting done for quite some years now. Makes me feel good to see it looking so great.
It's looking great! Congrats Anthony! Good job, Russ! And if you guys need any help....say... blocking it out, getting ready for paint before Autorama, or anything..... Gimmeeee a call!!!!!! Color? Sometime in the future???????
Great news for Anthony he loves that car! After all these years he has got to be stoked, all his friends in the Salvagerz car club in south Florida wish him well we miss him.
The hood-rounding is great, makes me want to go and look at mine to figure why your's looks cooler. Let us know if you need anything, I think we all have odds and ends lying around. Headlights look interesting too, bigger or extended.. or optical illusion?
The Jalopy Journal
