Final Parking Space: 1966 Mercury Colony Park
The station wagon has become a bit player in the American automotive marketplace as we approach the second quarter of the 21st century, but the junkyard reminds us of a time when that type of vehicle was the choice for family hauling. Since we haven’t seen a proper big Detroit wagon in this series prior to now, here we go with an imposing Mercury recently found in a Denver-area boneyard.
We have admired a few discarded wagons prior to this one, but they were all a good deal smaller: an AMC Eagle, a Toyota Tercel, and a Subaru GL-10 Turbo.
Those were fine machines, but here we’ve got an iconic 1960s American longroof that scales in at well over two tons and was capable of transporting the entire nuclear family around the continent in comfort. The United States reached Peak Wagon, i.e., when the largest number of distinct new wagon models were available, in two model years: 1964 and 1977.
This is a Colony Park, mechanically identical to the Ford Country Squire and sharing its faux-woodgrain siding. Both the Colony Park and Country Squire were based on the full-sized Ford chassis used under the Custom, Galaxie, and LTD.
The Colony Park was the most opulent station wagon sold by the Ford Motor Company in the United States for the 1966 model year, with an MSRP of $3502 ($34,723 in 2024 dollars). Its cheaper no-woodgrain sibling was the Commuter, counterpart to the Ford Country Sedan.
The Colony Park in front of the Del Monte Lodge in Pebble Beach (renamed The Lodge at Pebble Beach in 1978) in the ’66 Mercury brochure has the same colors as today’s car.
This one appears to have been sold new in St. Paul, Minnesota. It must have moved to a less rusty place soon after purchase, because the body is reasonably solid.
Still, there’s enough corrosion to have made this car a challenging restoration project.
This car was purchased with some costly optional equipment, including air conditioning. That was $430, or $4264 after inflation.
The engine has been purchased and the car’s build tag is missing, so we can’t know what the original engine was. What we do know is that it must have been some member of the FE-series big-block V-8 family, with 390, 410, or 428 cubic inches of displacement.
The transmission in this car is a three-speed Multi-Drive Merc-O-Matic, not to be confused with the earlier two-speed Merc-O-Matic. I believe this is a first-year C6 automatic; the “green dot” shift position between “Drive” and “L” gave you all three forward gears, while the “Drive” position locked out low gear and started you out in second for better snow traction.
This is the new-for-1966 “Dual-Action Tailgate” (known as the “Magic Doorgate” on Ford-badged wagons), which could be opened either as a sideways-opening door or as a fold-down tailgate.
The interior still has some good parts to offer Colony Park aficionados.
The Colony Park name as the designation for the top Mercury station wagon lasted from 1957 all the way through the final Grand Marquis Colony Parks in 1991. That means there were new Colony Parks available for more than half of Mercury’s 1939-2011 existence.
As late as 1982, Mercury offered three sizes of station wagon with fake wood siding; Ford stayed in the North American wagon business until the final 2007 Focus wagon was sold. The newest Detroit wagon you can buy today is the 2020 Buick Regal TourX.
Kids are murder on a car, whether it’s a Ford or a Mercury.
It’s the best ride on the market (this side of Continental).
Yes, there was official 1966 Mercury theme music!
To bad somebody didn’t get hold of this wagon before it got to this state and restored it. A much cooler vehicle than those god awful SUVs of recent times……
The rust may have saved it from Demo Derby. So many wagons die there is a crumpled heap. It is hard to find old wagons anymore.
Most of them came with the standard 390 engine. Very few people opted for the 428 unless they were planning to haul a travel trailer on a regular basis over the mountains and I didn’t see a hitch on that car.
My Dad brought home a ’67 Colony Park around 1970. It had the 410, rated at 330hp, with the C6. The FE’s massive torque came in handy when we towed a tent trailer, then graduated to a house trailer. It also came in handy when I learned to drive in that car and then raced around town doing burnouts, even with the tall highway gears which I believe were 2.73. I loved Mercs enough that my first car was then a ’69 Cyclone, that I did up black on black. And I loved wagons enough that 50 years later my daily is now a 2013 VW SportWagen TDI. I wish enough of my teenage pals were still around that I could stuff them in it and go for a cruise on the main drag. The record for the Colony Park was 13 guys crammed in on top of one another, some hanging out the back window going yee-hah. I wonder how many I could squeeze into the SportWagen? Likely not as many since we’re all just a little bit fatter now…
As I recall, the Buick Tour X was not from Detroit. It was a rebadged Opel. That makes the last real American wagon the aforementioned Focus, built in Wayne, Michigan.
Isn’t the Focus a piece of euro trash like the Transit van? So it’s not real American either.
Wouldn’t it (being a Ford product) be a 427 instead of a 428? That was my guess before reading.
My dad got a ’65 version of this as a company lease. It was the second model from the top, which was called Montcalm in Canada. There was a 390 under the hood and it must have had a 4 barrel setup because that thing could move despite its size and weight. Dad let me drive it around the neighbourhood although I was only 12! Great memories.
The Ol Man got a 68 Colony Park for the fam- fondly remembered as my learner’s permit ride. He was proud of how loaded up it was, particularly the 285 hp 2bbl 10.5:1 compression 390 he (inaccurately) called a 390P. Comfortweave 6 way power bench front seat! And a new thing called Cruise Control- a vac diaphragm rig that was pure magic.
Last wagon I remember was a ’71 Colony Park with a 429 in it -tons of lux and cushy on a 121″ wheelbase with seriously overboosted PS. The ’68 was a much better driving rig.
Todd Z – It has always been my understanding that the Traction-Lok option on 60-70s Fords were Detroit Lockers (ratcheting type) where the later Traction-Lok option is found in the limited slip 8.8 . Ford simply continued to use the same name for the option on two completely different rears.
My Dad worked for Ford and leased one exactly like this . He let me, his 16 year old car crazed kid, spec it out. I ordered cream with a saddle interior wire wheel covers and automatic locking vacuum door locks 390 2v, he would not let me get the 4v, I beat many a car on Wodward avenue in the day, my buddy down the street also had one with the 410 4v but I would beat him easily. It was a great car but I was racing around in it and hit a bump puncturing the radiator and it had to be towed into the company garage, Dad was not happy . I miss that car, great memories
In the early ’80’s you’d see them for sale in front yards all the time. The Colony Parks were huge: With the seats down you could haul full sheets of gyp. board or plywood, and still be able to close the tailgate. The one’s we could make $ on had the factory towing package and trans cooler. Great for hauling boats or house trailers.
We had a ’66 Colony Park, in white with a metallic blue interior when I was learning to drive. It was a 410 4V; it seems like most Colony Parks had that engine-a Mercury exclusive. It had a Holley double pumper on it when we bought it (used), and it really was quite fast, but wouldn’t cold start easily. When Dad went back to the Autolite carburetor, it really lost a lot of performance. It was a nice looking car, but riding in the side facing rear seats was likely to induce vomiting on a curvy road. I really liked that car and wish we still had it.
who remembers the big Fords from that era falling out of park, I worked at a Sears auto center in Oakbrook Illinois back in the very early seventies, we quickly learned to chock the wheels after a Ford Wagon was left running on a drive on rack, it fell into drive and drove off hitting a dumpster on the way down.
My grandfather had a 1966 Mercury Monterrey 2 door hardtop in that pale yellow. It had the dealer added air conditioning (Mark V Allegro) and he kept it well into the mid 1980’s. The rear spring mounts rusted off the frame here in Chicagoland, but I have so many good memories of spending time with him in that car. I actually found a vintage model car kit of the car at a garage sale, and later, a modern reproduction model kit of the car. I bought both, and built one as a tribute to him, even found the proper Ford color spray paint at the hobby store.
Good for you with the model car tribute… these and those about memo are the type of human interest comments that give the cars life….
The Cruise-O-Matic isn’t a C-6 — it’s a Borg-Warner based autos. The FMX was the last of the B-W based autos Ford made, and even it was start-in-first. That’s right — Ford licensed the B-W designs and all the “O-Matic” models are B-W designs with some changes by Ford. There were two reasons the B-W 9and B-W based Ford) autos started in second — one was for better economy, getting into high gear faster, the other for less slipping in slippery conditions as noted. The first reason is the main one — that’s why the first Drive position starts in second. That dates back to 1930s and 40s thinking/driving, and was outdated y the 60s. Later B-W transmissions started in first. This started with the floor shifter “Shift-Command” autos in the 65 and 66 Ramblers in six cylinder cars (column shifted cars still started in 2nd, as well as V-8 floor shifted — the first gear start improved performance with the sixes), all transmissions starting in 1967. By the way, the Ford built B-W designs are all based on the B-W M-8, not the later models — even the FMX.