With the price and availability of old steel getting harder and harder to find, building that hot rod or custom you want often requires buying a car that has already been restored or modified and going back to the drawing board with it. Take Myron Reichert's custom '50 Mercury, for example. When he purchased the car a few years back, he was looking for a '50 Merc similar to the one he had built back in high school. His search took him to a scalloped yellow custom Merc located in Bonsall, California, that was for sale. Hands were shook, a deal was made, and later that day, Myron was heading back to his Rancho Santa Fe home in his newly purchased Merc; as he puts it, "it was like dj vu all over again," driving a custom Merc so many years later.
A trio of Barry Grant Demon...
A trio of Barry Grant Demon 98s feed the fuel to the H&H-prepped Flathead, while Offenhauser finned aluminum heads ensure efficient combustion is maintained.
The Merc Myron wound up buying was, for all intents and purposes, a finished car. In fact, when he brought the custom over to Randy Clark and his crew at Hot Rods & Custom Stuff (HRCS), the last thing they thought was that they were going to do a complete teardown and rebuild. But that's exactly what Myron had in mind. Short of doing a body-off resto, the plan called for a complete teardown and rebuild in what turned out to be a mostly cosmetic overhaul.
The crew at HRCS began by knocking down the yellow scallop paint and tore out the existing upholstery to make way for fresh hide. At the same time, the existing Flathead, with only 30,000 original miles when it rolled in to HRCS, was sent out to H&H Flatheads for a complete teardown and rebuild as part of an overall powertrain upgrade. The fresh motor returned to HRCS complete with a Barry Grant 3x2 Demon 98 setup topped with Thickstun air cleaners. A freshly cored radiator completed the upgrade made in the engine compartment.
While the engine was out being rebuilt, the Merc was sent over to the paint and body department at HRCS where the crew made short order of the yellow paint and applied a fresh coat of two-tone PPG blue. Inside the Merc, a Vintage Air A/C unit was installed under the dash, requiring the addition of a custom fabricated sub-dash panel to house the vents and climate controls. The old fabric aside, the in-house upholstery shop at HRCS wrapped the entire passenger compartment in two-tone tan leather and carpet. A Sony head unit was coupled to a set of Pioneer speakers to add some tunes to the custom, tied to the rest of the electrical via a Painless 18-circuit wiring harness.
With the overhaul complete, Myron was reunited with his fresh Merc, completing a circle that had started back in his high school days with his first custom and ending with the newly finished "customized restoration" blue Merc.