Scott Reid is a very patient man.
He bought this 1966 Mercury S-33 fourteen years ago and it finally hit the road last year.
He was motivated by a post card.
These “Canuck” Meteors aren’t the easiest cars to restore so at least Scott had a fallback position.
The saga began when Scott found this survivor ’66 Meteor. His wife had a picture of it and in his own words, “it didn’t look too bad so I couldn’t leave it sit”. “Not too bad” is a relative term in car parlance and in this Mercury Meteor’s case.
Scott described the car this way, “There was rust on the quarters, along the door sills and in the rocker panels”…the usual suspects.
He picked the car up for the princely sum of $600.00. Clearly this was long before TV auctions and online buying spiked the price of project cars.
Scott was in no hurry with this car but a reminder of its existence in his life came in the form of a postcard from his brother with his car in the picture.
There was a flurry of horse-trading at one point and Scott ended up with a ’32 Ford – the Holy Grail for hot rod builders but the Merc was still in project mode. It was also in his brother’s hands so Scott bought a ’66 Meteor four-door sedan to underscore his frustration with his brother’s lack of progress on the Meteor. He added, “It was 50 miles from where my brother lived”.
Scott added that his brother was “kind of interested” in the 4 door sedan so a deal was struck for the Canuck Ford and Scott had the S-33 once again.
This car was a big project and it took a fair amount of time and effort to get the Merc back on the road. Scott was still in trial run mode last year and he admitted, “it’s got a lot of squeaks and rattles but it drives like a dream. I wish it wasn’t so quiet, it would cover up the noise”.
Scott likes the unique heritage of this car and that’s clearly what motivated him to invest in a Meteor 14 years ago. He appreciates the odd traits of these Canadian Mercs and listed things like “it’s got a Ford Galaxie interior”.
There aren’t significant numbers of Mercury S-33 two-door hardtops left in existence, but this one is in for the long ride.
Clearly this wasn’t an impulse buy…over 14 years ago.
Jerry Sutherland
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