First published in the September 2004 issue of Street Machine

Start with a vision and end with a dream. The catalyst may be a movie, a chance sighting or the pages of a magazine, but if your aim is to stand out in a ‘lone wolf’ sort of way, build yourself a custom cruiser — especially when we’re talking 1949-51 Mercury.

Big Al Handley is a 59-year-old baby boomer with a passion for the 50s and 60s, and he’s nailed this timeless look perfectly with his latest effort. The resurrection of this two-door customising icon is nothing short of amazing.

The raw material for these cars has all but dried up, so many people dodge the grief involved in resuscitating 50-year-old Detroit iron and buy a fibreglass repro, ready chopped. But fantastic plastic was not for Big Al. It had to be the real steel deal.

A Stateside contact had been keeping his ear to the ground since 1994, searching for a suitable Mercury coupe. Al had already brought back a chopped Mercury convertible but was looking for the perfect project car.

“That car was OK but I needed to build my own — that one was built in the States,” he explains.

With advertised cars thin on the ground and ferociously overpriced when they showed up, Louis Virgillio (Al’s contact) tracked down a car in 2001 that was becoming literally thin on the ground due to 20 years sitting in a Texas cornfield, without wheels or driveline. The good news was that Louis threw a not-quite-as-desirable — nor as rusted — four-door Mercury into the deal, all for less than two thousand greenbacks.

Once this lot found its way to Oz, work began in earnest and followed a well-laid plan. “I knew what I wanted — that Classic early-60s look, with all the period-perfect accessories,” says Al.

Old friend Kerry Fehlberg performed the lion’s share of major surgery to make the car whole again but Al put in plenty of hours too. The four-door donor car gave up the entire lower rear, some of the roof and the back window. With cutting tools in hand, the roof copped a chop for the stealth look this marque loves. The front of the roof came down 4¼ inches while the rear came down 4¾ inches.

To make the two ends meet and flow, the front screen-posts had to be pinched in 1½ inches and leaned back the same. As the curved, toughened rear screen can’t be cut down, it was pulled forward six inches to complete the roof chop.

As the original floor is adding iron to the corn in Texas, Sunsheet metal on the Gold Coast provided the shaped steel required for the boys to fabricate the new floor and firewall. This allowed for a mild channelling of the body over its frame rails.

A ’54 Chev grill supplies the toothy grin and frenched ’53 Ford headlights lead the way. Bringing up the rear, a set of ’53 Mercury tail-lights and ’52 Chev over-riders sort the aesthetically-pleasing tail.
Squareness was considered blasphemy so every corner was rounded off — including doors, boot and bonnet — and ’53 Buick side-trim was added.

After 15 months of Sundays, the bodywork was complete enough to hand over to another long-time friend — Tony Hart of Performance Art — for the classic black paint and crowd-pleasing flames.
“I had to go gloss black — it was cheaper than a divorce,” quips Al. In keeping with Al’s previous four cars, Marilyn Monroe lounges across the back.

In the motivation department, the now-386ci small-block packs more performance than a Viagra bottle. It’s fed by a set of traditional triple jugs — three Rochesters for the uninitiated. An Edelbrock Tri-power manifold supplies this charge to the ported Fuelly heads, and a re-curved Mallory lights the fire. “I had a Chev engine lying around so it just had to have that tri-power look,” states Al.

A Pete Jackson gear-drive supplies additional engine tunes, as do twin 24-inch hotdogs and a
2½-inch stainless system.

Russell Jones’s engine work tips about 450 horses through a modified VQ Statesman 700R4 auto; a 12-bolt Chevy diff puts power to the pavement.

Keeping this sled above the corn stubble is stock suspension with adjustable Air Ride airbags fore and aft. HZ Holden front discs and a shortened Commodore steering rack “do a wonderful job of keeping me out of corn fields”, Al adds.

On nostalgia rides you can’t go past the look of wide, whitewalls on stock, steel rims. 1957 Dodge Lancer caps, available as repros, hide Al’s nuts.

The rock ’n’ roll theme continues inside, with white Naugahyde in 2½-inch tuck and roll adorning the stock front seats and modified EA/XF Falcon rear.

In recognition of this car’s redneck roots, a Confederate flag serves as hood-lining. A brace of original gauges peer past the pearled ’58 Thunderbird tiller. An owner-built steering column is a modified XD unit with an aluminium cover hiding the fuglies. Power windows seal the deal.

Big Al’s favourite song is Rag Doll by The Four Seasons pumping from the 1200-watt Sherwood unit to four speakers up front, and four down the back.

“Listening to Rag Doll while cruising, they could drop the A-bomb for all I care!”

A little off the top please…

Nothing makes more of a statement than a top chop — but how straight-forward is it? Well as long as you have a well-laid plan and some panel-beating skills it’s achievable, though not for the faint-hearted. Imagine an ellipse shape, such as the V8 Supercar logo. If you were to take a slice out of this shape and wanted to rejoin it, it would need stretching in order to make it marry up and become seamless and flowing. This same basic principle applies to top chops. The roof needs to grow in length and width when it comes down. This can be covered by many methods; one is to lay the front screen back and the rear screen forward. The width issue can be addressed by leaning the side pillars in to compensate. Fewer joins is what you’re looking for.

Cutting down glass is only possible if it’s laminated — rear screens are toughened and cannot be cut, so they require an alternative approach to avoid this. Some methods include using smaller rear screens and openings from other makes and models that have the same basic shape. The difficulty lies in making all these modifications flow nicely for that factory look. Planning is essential — measure three times and cut once. Cutting up pictures of the subject car is by far the best method to gain an insight into what’s involved and what may be required, though this doesn’t answer all the questions. Talking to others who have done this work is the next step, followed by buying some books on the subject.

Big Al Handley
1950 Mercury coupe

Thanks
Mal Storey, Allan Loose, Lenny Belcher, Rob Llewellyn, Tony Hart, Kerry Fehlberg, Russell Jones and my better half Kay for getting the idea out of my head and into my shed!