MINER 1949 Mercury Sport Sedan FORTY-NINER

You’re looking at the 1943 Ford. Or rather, you would be if the Second World War hadn’t interrupted America’s car production for the best part of four years. Of course, we all know this car as the 1949 Mercury, but its origins hark back to 1941 when Ford’s styling group under E T ‘Bob’ Gregorie had begun work on 1943 designs that never appeared because of the war. The basics of what became the post-war Mercurys and Lincolns were in place; the biggest change being the deleted running boards and separate fenders of the new integrated streamlined designs.

Henry Ford’s son Edsel, by then company president, had created Mercury in 1939, feeling a need to bridge the price gap between Ford and Lincoln. Edsel now directed Gregorie to use any spare time to plan Ford’s post-war styling direction and search for an “all-new creation to captivate public interest, yet not be too revolutionary or outlandish”.