Employee Rides: 1962 Mercury Comet - Darrian Wedding
What does it mean for a car to feel alive? We obviously know it's not a living, breathing thing. We understand that it's purely just metal and rubber, hours of R&D, the culmination of dozens of engineers, hundreds of workers, crafting parts, panels, machine work and assembly. Yet, there's this innate connection that we often feel with our vehicles. Like deep down it knows our sorrows and we know its story. Some feel this connection more than others and some will simply claim that we’re being childish and that it's just a car. To those people I can only say that they are missing out on the purest essence of car culture.
The year I bought my first car my grandfather, who had been a painter in Lincoln for over 40 years, passed away. He was a hotrodder to his core, having owned many classic vehicles, but none he was more proud of than his 1932 5 Window Coupe. The car was quite the hotrod for the time, it had the original banjo rear and model A 3 speed transmission but he had swapped in a 265 V8 from a Corvette and installed a dual quad induction system, chrome baby moon hubcaps with matching chrome smoothie wheels and painted it a gorgeous green metalflake. He had shown the car around the area and won many awards, he had also painted many of the hotrods from the area from the mid 60s. In some way I like to think I was carrying his torch, and that his subtle but classic styling rubbed off on me somehow.
When I bought this 1962 Mercury Comet, I didn’t know much about cars. I was 14 and didn’t even have a learners permit yet. I knew I liked older cars and trucks but didn’t know that buying the car would turn into a burning passion that would change my life. The point of the car was to be a father-son project and at first it was, my dad helped me work on the car and get it up and running and helped with maintenance and even taught me how to drive stick, 3 on the tree at that. After getting it running there wasn’t nearly as much excitement and my father stopped helping to inject money into the project. I was still finishing high school and didn’t have much of my own to invest, so the car sat in a sort of limbo drivable but not quite what I would consider road trip ready. It did steer me in my career path to choose starting the Auto Technical program at my local community college.
After graduating I was making some money working as an Auto Technician at a local dealership and was able to afford to start to tinker and fix more things which inevitably lead to a teardown and rebuild of the engine, trans, and rear end, re-upholstery of the interior and some new wheels and tires. The car had a fresh outlook on life and it definitely acted as such. Maybe it was the refreshed drivetrain or maybe it was the fact it was being show love it hadn't seen in decades but the car drove like a vehicle ought to for the first time since I owned it. However, that little hotrod bug had, unbeknownst to me, latched on years previous and soon it wasn’t enough for me so I set out once again to make changes to the vehicle, this was a full suspension overhaul, new bigger ford 8 inch rear, a 302 crate engine, and a ford T5 transmission. These changes would make a world of difference in the power department and due to the original 6 cylinders design only, weighed roughly 80 lbs. more meaning it still handled relatively decent.
This leads us to today, some minor electrical upgrades have been made but otherwise the vehicle remains as it was after those changes, there's always more to come and I have a sneaking suspicion that I’ll always be changing or modifying something about this car.