Is This the Most Comfortable Car Ever Made 1973 Mercury Marquis Brougham 460-4V V8

Well , hello again and welcome to Rare Classic Cars .

It's the weekend and so today I'm going to showcase , let's call it a U P S executives car .

What can Brown do for you ?

A 1973 mercury marquee bro .

And in the grand spectrum of classic vehicles , what cars would I say are the most comfortable cars that I've ever owned driven , et cetera right here in particular , I would say the 1973 and 74 models of these mercury marquee bros really are just stellar vehicles from a comfort perspective .

Don't buy this car if you're trying to go back and forth in mountain passes , left , right , etcetera .

It's not a handler .

But if you want a car that you just sink into the seats , that the foam and the seat cushions just envelops your body and you kick back , relax , very quiet on the inside .

Don't feel or hear any road shocks .

This is , this is the vehicle for you and in the spectrum of vehicles that I've owned , which really spans from the late fifties all the way through current day .

I would say that these cars are at the top of the list in terms of riding comfort may be only bested or matched by the 80 S era town cars which are also excellent .

And yes , I know for the G M fans and the Mo Park fans , you're going to say no , you know , I have my big floaty boat classic that rides really well .

Yeah , some of them do .

I would say that I haven't really driven a Chrysler ever including the Imperials that ride as comfortably as this car .

I think in the G M Stable , I would say the only thing that comes close , maybe it lightly edges this out in some cases is my 65 Bonneville .

But the other division cars from General Motors in 1965 while they ride really nicely .

And I've owned Oldsmobiles , Buicks Cadillacs , Chevrolets this car here .

It's not just the combination of the ride on its own .

It's really how the ride works in conjunction with the seat .

So Bonneville is an example .

The 65 Bonneville is a wonderful riding car , beautifully driving car .

The seats are not bad but they're not as good as this .

So to me , this car , when you look at the ride comfort , coupled with the passenger compartment comfort , I think that this is the top of the line for anything that the domestics produced .

And it's really just it was around for a few years .

The 71 72 Mercury were really good as well as the 69 70 this platform was new in 69 .

It was redone and Ford did a fabulous job with it .

The Fords rode on 100 21 inch wheel base .

The mercury is 124 and the Lincoln is 127 but it was a great platform .

It lasted through till 1978 .

But I would say the real Hals in years or the best years of this platform were 1969 to 74 almost each year from 69 to 74 the ride quality and the quietness improved the sound insulation blanket in these , whether it's underneath the carpet or the kick panels or in the doors is , I mean , ridiculously thick Ford even had different sound insulation packages if you got a regular LTD versus an LTD Brome versus a marquee versus a marquee Brome .

So this has the best of the best in terms of the sound insulation packages .

And I would say the Lincoln , you know , I have that 72 Continental and it drives really nicely .

The seat is very comfortable , but the car is almost a bit too heavy and a bit too long of the wheel base with weight out at the extremes and it gets some body quirks as a result of that , very subtle , but this car is extremely taught .

The body feels rigid , feels like it's crafted from a build of steel .

I think the Lincoln was just starting to get a little too long relative to the frame strength .

But these are , I can't say enough about them .

And the great thing about these vehicles is now they're starting to go up in price a little bit .

But for many years , they were super affordable classics , this Ginger glamour metallic car .

So this is a glamour metallic , which was an extra cost option .

And it also gave you the body colored wheels as opposed to just the brushed wheel covers .

And this car remains an affordable classic .

I picked this car up for , I think around $5500.03 years ago , it was from Roswell , New Mexico , which was where it was sold originally .

So this car was in the desert but obviously always garaged .

Its original paint , original vinyl top , no dashboard cracks , interior is just about as mint as can be somebody really loved on this car .

And I mean for that price now these are probably worth maybe 10 to $12,000 something in that zip code .

It really doesn't get much better than this .

This car also has some really nice options .

It has the 460 under hood .

So 73 was the first full model year where you could get the 460 in the mercury .

It had been a Lincoln exclusive until midway through the 1972 model year when you could get it on these Mercury .

But this has the 460 .

It has air conditioning , it has cruise control .

It also has a , a track radio power seat , twin comfort lounge seats , the traction lock rear with a 3.25 to 1 rear end ratio , which is a numerically higher ratio than the 2.75 to 1 that was standard .

So this car really scoots off the line quite quickly and it's just an absolute gem to drive .

So it's interesting , these cars were just kind of unloved in the US for so long , maybe unknown as well , particularly the Mercury .

And consequently , they have this huge following overseas in the Scandinavian countries like Norway , Sweden , Finland , Germany , Denmark as well .

And I'm a part of a Facebook group for 1965 to 68 Mercury owners and one of the elements of the group is from Norway and she does the best restorations .

I've seen Bar None .

I've never seen anybody do that .

Good of a restoration on a car .

So these cars , a lot of them when nobody wanted them when the US went overseas and there's not many left .

They made little , I think between 20 and 25,000 of these new .

But if you look at the vehicle records in terms of registrations from R L Polk , which is a confidential database , there's about 200 or so registered in the US .

That's it .

They're all but gone and extinct .

So there's obviously some still in garages and somewhere else that may not be registered .

But the point is still made that there aren't many left .

So if you find one of these or the L T D bros , pick it up , if it's a really nice conditioned car and it's a good price , you are not going to be dissatisfied if you wanted a caprice or an impala of the same year , you know , for a coup like this , you're probably going to pay 20,000 , maybe even a little north of that .

Now .

And frankly , this is a better driving car .

Let's take the camera off and walk around it and talk a little bit more about it .

All right .

So let's do a detailed walk around of the 73 marquee Brome .

Now , this was the year before the grand marquee trim came out .

So this was the top of the line Mercury and in 73 they revised the front grill here .

This is actually the only year for these .

This grill is metal .

This is metal , 71 2 are plastic , 74 5 are plastic .

So don't know why .

73 only it's metal , but it's nice that it also spills into the headlight covers .

This is the same header panel and hood and everything on the 74 but that grill doesn't spill into the headlights and it has a more vertical theme as opposed to the egg crate , which is kind of Cadillac .

Cadillac really had quite a few cars with the egg crate , including the 76 Seville walking around .

This is a big car for sure .

Not as big as a Lincoln , but 124 inch wheel base , roughly 225 inches in length .

And as I said , this one came from New Mexico where I bought it from .

It was the second owner who had owned it for about 30 years and he just really loved the car .

If you do find one of these , if you want to understand what the typical issues are , there are a few .

The first is the carburetor .

These auto 8 43 hundreds , which I've talked about before are really not great carburetors , but that's easy to remedy .

Just take it off , put it Brock or Holly on it if you want or just live with it .

This car is the original carburetor and it's fine .

I haven't had , if you rebuild them correctly , they're not nearly as temperamental .

The other issue is typically not the window motors themselves , but the gears in the window motors have plastic torque pins that shred themselves and then the windows won't go up and down .

You'll hear the motor running but the window won't move very , very , very typical problem forwards of this era , particularly of this age .

Not a bad repair .

You got to take the door panel off , take the window motor out , clean out the little bits , put it back together .

I had Tony Lawler of Tony's car care in Van Dale Illinois .

Do that in this car .

The back windows weren't working .

So you have to take out the back seat for that and the armrest , which he did and now they work great .

You could see the back window as opposed to the Lincolns which retracted into on the marks which attracted into the sale panel .

These just go up and down and they all have .

It's interesting when you go up , they all have like this little bump at the end of the travel every single one of them does that .

I have no idea why it just must be the regulator mechanism .

That's how that operates .

And another tip , Tony told me if you want to make sure that you increase the longevity of your torques pins is just before you put the window up , hit the power window switch quickly and bump it .

So you take all the slack out of the system , then push the window motor up and don't let it hit the stop on the way up while it's moving , just stop it a little bit before it's about to hit the stop , then bump it up .

And if you're going to let it stay for a long time , if you don't want your window motors to kind of get stuck in one position , tap the down button here very quickly and you've kind of relaxed the window gear train .

So a couple little tips , I'll put that down just so you get the nice hard top look .

But here's the twin comfort lounge seats .

This would be the last year for the twin comfort lounge seats only available in 71 to 73 .

And I love this faux ostrich print cloth and it just looks amazing .

And this embroidery up here , beautiful , beautiful upholstery on these cars .

I also have another 73 marquee bro , that's pastel blue with white vinyl interior and the vinyl is wonderful as well .

It's very soft , almost feels like leather , just a high quality vinyl , not low quality at all .

This is a one year only door panel in 74 they would revise it with kind of more of a standard handle , different design .

70 ones and twos are different as well .

This one , unfortunately , they did go to little bit of hard plastic here .

This is soft but the bottom is hard .

It's still , you know , overall it's a nice door panel , got the light there and the carpeting on the bottom .

If you ever want to know a little bit of trivia about your for , you can look on these VIN plates .

The fifth letter is the engine code .

So A is the 460 V eight , you can look up what the engine codes are , axle codes also , you can look those up .

But if they're a letter for the axle code , that means you have the traction lock , rear end .

If it's a number , it means you have an open dip .

So a quick way to tell what you have and the Ford has always had this goofy set up where for the tilt wheel , you push the turn signal stock forward , it feels like you're about to break it .

But that is how it works .

This is a one year only instrument panel , you put the wheel back down .

Actually , you can see one year on the instrument panel where it has a slight radius here to it .

74 78 top pads will fit these but it is slightly different .

He did change the wood grain over the years at the end of the run in 78 he's had more of a burl wood tone , which is not my favorite .

This actually looks pretty convincing and good to my eye .

You can see it's AM F M eight track , that's where you put the eight track tape in .

This is where you push the button to go to your next eight track .

The clock is right twice a day here .

The index pointers on the speedometer , fuel gauge , the park indicator are all white in 74 they would go to being red presumably because it was a bit hard to read on these .

You can see this car is 42,000 miles on it .

So clearly a high mileage vehicle , great carpet shag carpet in these as well .

Very nice thick nap to them .

And I mean , just an overall comfortable ride .

This car does have the optional reclining passenger seat too and you can take a really nice nap with that as a head pillow .

Let's take a look under hood and great door closure sound on the Fords .

One tip .

I will tell you if you own one of these is make sure you lubricate your hood hinges otherwise they start wearing through and then the hood starts popping up and you got to adjust it because bad things are happening .

I haven't detailed this engine bay at all as is typical for me .

I guess some people will not like that , but I drive these cars not on bad weather days and I just kind of like the look of an original engine bay .

This car is 50 almost 50 years old now .

I mean , it's not going to look mint air conditioning works .

This has been converted to R 134 .

I have replaced the de clutching fan on here and I did record the radiator made it an upgrade to a three row as opposed to a two row , which was what came on .

All these even with the air conditioning cars , Ford kind of skimmed on the cooling systems a little bit on these , this one , the water pump bearing is pretty good .

One way if you want to check your water pump bearing is grab a hold of a fan blade here obviously , with the engine off and pull on it and push and see if you feel any play , if you feel play time to replace the water pump .

And yes , these 460 were down on power really making in the low 200 horsepower , I think like 202 horsepower .

But let me tell you , this car does not feel low on power at all .

It feels very fast , very peppy , especially for the weight of it .

I do not ever drive this car and think , gosh , I wish I had more horsepower .

That is not the thought that crosses my mind .

It feels very peppy .

Let's start it up here .

Do my famous reach and start and the fast idles are and it's cold .

This car just has a single exhaust on it from the factory and it's still quiet .

So I haven't changed it .

Very quiet when you ride in the car .

Once it gets noisy , I might put factory style duels on it , which I've done with my other 73 marquee brome .

But I hate to alter this one when it just really is whisper quiet , quiet .

There we go .

Nothing like the sound of a big block in the afternoon .

This is a one year only trunk .

The front end was one year only .

This is one year only as well .

It would change the tail lights .

They put the trunk lock emblem back on in 74 that was on in 71 .

Gone .

In 72 but just an absolutely stellar riding car and like I said , very reliable .

Biggest issue on these from a reliability standpoint is the carburetors .

This is the first year of the two head lamp actuators , one on the left and the right , the 70 ones and twos have one in the middle and this system is a bit more problematic .

I've had these rebuilt and the spring is taken out so they'll stay closed indefinitely .

They're very heavy springs in them which if there's no engine vacuum cause them to pop open , which is good for safety .

But of course , I'm not driving this car on a daily basis and they work great .

So that's this little bit on my U P S executives car .

Thanks again for watching .

Thanks for watching this video on the 73 marquee , bro .

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