Final Parking Space: 1961 Mercury Comet 2-Door Sedan

Quick, what was the lowest-priced new 1961 Mercury? That’s what we’ve got for today’s FPS machine: a San Jose-built Comet two-door sedan found in a boneyard near Sacramento over the summer.

Facing ever-increasing competition from small cars such as the Rambler, Volkswagen Beetle, and Renault Dauphine (plus the threat of new compacts then being brewed up by General Motors and Chrysler), Ford’s Robert McNamara drove the development of the Falcon compact. Resources for the Falcon project came at the expense of the Edsel; you are free to debate the merits of this decision in the comments.

Because nearly every Ford-badged car model sold in the United States had a Mercury-badged counterpart during Mercury’s 1939–2011 existence, the Falcon had a Mercurized sibling from the very beginning. This was the Comet.

The early Comet looked very similar to the Falcon, but got a different grille, more decorations, and these snazzy angled tailfins. Mercury badging didn’t appear until the 1962 model year (just as the early Valiant didn’t get Plymouth badges right away), so this car was sold as “the Comet by Lincoln-Mercury Division of Ford Motor Company.”

The build tag was just glued on over a 1969 oil-change sticker, so I thought it might have been swapped from a different Comet by a final owner lacking a title or documentation. However, the codes on the plate check out for this car: a 1961 two-door with Sultana White paint, green interior, and three-on-the-tree manual transmission. It was built on December 30th (presumably 1960, since there would be a “30Z” date code for 1961) at the San Jose Assembly Plant, now the site of the Great Mall. That’s not the only California shopping mall located where American cars were once built; The Plant Shopping Center lives where Camaros were born at Van Nuys Assembly, while GM’s legendary Oakland Assembly (1916-1963) is now the site of Eastmont Town Center.

It appears that Pick-n-Pull tried to sell this car as a “builder” before putting it out in the general self-service inventory. I’ve found plenty of such cars at PnP yards in California, including a 1952 Hudson Wasp, a 1967 Cadillac Calais, and a 1949 Dodge Coronet. In my opinion, $3199 was too much to ask for a Comet sedan with California-roasted interior, despite its solid body (the Comet convertible and hardtop coupe weren’t added to the lineup until the 1963 model year).

This car was built with the base engine, a 144-cubic-inch “Thrift-Power Six” rated at 85 horsepower. That was enough for a 2376-pound car by the standards of the time. A 1961 Comet buyer seeking more factory power could get the optional 170-cubic-inch Thrift-Power Six, with its 101 horses. Production of this family of Ford straight-six OHV engines ended in 1980, though you could make the case that the Ford HSC four-cylinder of Tempo/Topaz fame was at least a cousin of the Thrift-Power). Comets didn’t get factory V-8s until the 260 Windsor became available for the 1963 model year.

Maybe Mercury would still be with us today if it had kept yellow valve covers.

The transmission is the base three-speed manual with column shifter. This was the most common transmission/shifter setup for low-priced American cars until fairly deep into the 1960s.

Lincoln-Mercury offered some high-priced iron at this time of this Comet’s manufacture, with the luxurious 1961 Mercury Colony Park station wagon listing at $4115 ($43,589 in 2024 dollars). For a base Comet two-door that year, the MSRP was just $1998 ($21,164 after inflation). Meanwhile, the 1961 Ford Falcon started at $1912 ($20,253 now). In case you’re interested, the sticker price on a new 1961 VW Beetle was $1565 ($16,578 today), while the 1961 Rambler American business coupe was $1831 ($19,395 in current dollars).

Available with two tight-fisted engines!