A concept car (or "Dream Car" as we called them in the 1950s) serves several potential purposes. Some concepts deal mostly with wild, "futuristic" styling department ideas serving to show the public that the carmaker has The Right Stuff. Others are thinly disguised versions of designs in the preproduction pipeline, intended to prime potential buyers to accept forthcoming new features. Then there are concept cars that explore potential future production styling themes and features. Such was the case of today's subject, the Mercury XM-800.
The book "Ford Design Department — Concepts & Showcars" by Jim and Cheryl Farrell devotes a section to the XM-800. It seems that by the early 1950s Ford Motor Company was aware that it needed to fill an upper-middle price range slot that its Mercury brand was not covering well. (This is further explained in Thomas E. Bonsall's book
"Disaster in Dearborn: The Story of the Edsel", especially pages 73-74.)
At first, the idea was to launch a more luxurious Mercury, making more use of the name of its brand-topping Monterey line. The sources seem to hint that Monterey or Mercury-Monterey might become more distinct from ordinary Mercurys, perhaps a quasi-new brand.
As it happened, a new brand was created, the famous (to car history buffs and folks my age) Edsel.
Below are images of the XM-800 that provided early design thinking on the project as well as details later used by production Lincolns.
Gallery
Publicity photo of the XM-800.
Front quarter view, same setting as the previous image.
A 1956 Lincoln. Compare the front wheel opening, "frenched" headlight assembles, as well as the general feel of the front end to the XM-800 in the previous image. Nothing identical, but suggestive that this design theme was in the back of stylists' minds circa 1954 when the '56 Lincoln's basic features were largely set. However, Ford's 1953 X-100 concept car (some background here), featured the same sort of detail influence on the '56s Lincoln. And likely influenced the XM-800 as well, being a slightly older design, though the rest of the X-100 was quite different.
Now for some RM Sotheby's auction photos of the restored XM-800.
Very early-mid 1950s thinking. Panoramic windshield. Long fenderline thrusting fore and aft to enhance both visual and actual length. The rollbar-like C-pillar was chosen because it added freshness. The semi-covered front wheels were retrograde, despite being carried over to the '56 Lincoln.
Rear quarter. Hints of tailfins a few years before Chrysler featured them on its cars. The heavy, chromed rear centerpiece strikes me as being Dream Car fluff, not likely to be retained in full on a production version. An actual production car line would surely include four-door sedans, so the massive C-pillar would have to have been modified or eliminated with respect to that body type.
Ha! "Dream" cars, not concept cars. This is what they were universally referred to as back then. This one obviously should have originally been labeled as a Lincoln, not a Mercury.
ReplyDeleteThe C pillar treatment with the line of the top of the rear window being picked up in the side window area with some sort of blank chromed/lined panel did show up in different forms in the '56 Lincoln four door sedan as mentioned here a few days ago, and in a different way with the '57-58 Ford four door hardtops.
The extension of the sculpturing around the front wheel opening was expanded on in the 1958 Lincoln.
The slight forward curve of the headlight hoods was probably an influence on the lightly facelifted last real Packards in 1956. And the fins on the also lightly facelifted 1956 Plymouths.
A fake rear grille, although never with as heavy a chrome surround as this, was seen in many American cars for years after this, including 1956 on Lincolns and as more of a separate thing like this in the 1961 (which was actually kind of odd because it didn't match the blended in front grille except the pattern). And more clearly copied in facelifted Studebaker Hawks, first just impressed in the metal and later with an actual fake grille.
And of course tail pipes exiting through the rear bumper were seen in both Lincolns and Cadillacs, defeated by the dirty exhausts at the time. Now we don't want to know about IC engine exhausts, even cleaned up and by about 1000% and way lower in carbon too - partly by burning half the fuel a similar size and weight 1950's car would.
It seems the XM was left to rot and expensively restored. Lots more photos:
https://www.conceptcarz.com/profile/12036,7469/1954-mercury-monterey-xm-800-concept.aspx
The history of the XM-800 up to its 2009 restoration, including a period film clip:
ReplyDeletehttps://kustomrama.com/wiki/1954_Mercury_XM-800
Wonder if Citroen was remembering the name of this with their own futuristic (but actually produced) XM?