1969 Mercury Cyclone: Electric Orange, Two Drivers and a Nose for Daytona

When Cars magazine asked Lincoln-Mercury for a jazzy Cyclone CJ road-test car in 1969, it got one painted Calypso Coral, a colour the staff promptly renamed Electric Orange. The June 1969 report called the car one of the most 'in' machines on the supercar scene and one of the least desirable to own for a driver who wanted to stay out of trouble, because it looked as if it was breaking the speed limit while idling. 'Driving around suburban New York in this job was like setting up street eliminations at each traffic light,' the magazine wrote, and after a while the testers accepted the ritual.¹

Under the paint it was a big car. Cars listed a 116-inch wheelbase and a ready-to-go weight of 3,900 pounds, yet reported quarter-mile times of 13.90 to 14.20 seconds at 100 to 102 mph with 3.91 gears, closed stock exhausts and stock tires, through a Select Shift automatic. The magazine credited the 428 Cobra Jet with Super Stock record potential while idling as tamely as an ordinary engine, and judged the Cyclone more a cruising GT than a street racer. A caption priced the functional hood-scoop option at $140 over the basic 428 package. Those times belong to that one tested car.¹

The Cars staff described the Cobra Jet's manners as carefully as its times. At normal throttle, they explained, the 735-cfm Holley drew warmed air, and when the driver floored the pedal a flap in the air cleaner opened to pull cool outside air through the functional hood scoop, finished in matte black with CJ lettering. They also found real faults: a basic understeer that demanded commitment in the esses, and power steering that tended to stay in the turn unless the driver guided it back. On the open road the verdict turned kinder, with a comfortable bucket-seat driving position, luggage room to spare and, with the 3.91 gears and Select Shift, a ride-and-handling compromise they judged solid.¹

The Cyclone line itself was simple. Over-Drive Magazine's compiled table lists the Cyclone fastback, body 63A with a bench seat or 63C with buckets, at a $2,754 factory price, and the Cyclone CJ, body 63H, at $3,207, with the 428 Cobra Jet standard and Ram Air optional. It counts 5,882 Cyclones and 3,261 CJs, the same figures Wikipedia's Cyclone table gives citing Holder and Kunz. In that table the CJ is about 36 percent of the 9,143 Cyclone fastbacks and about 2.8 percent of Mercury's 115,944 mid-size cars, and Over-Drive's factoids add that only 1.8 percent of 1969 mid-size Mercurys had a four-speed.^2,3,4

Mercury's performance fastback was a close relative of Ford's Cobra, and the magazines said so. Motor Trend's January 1969 supercar comparison noted that the Cobra carried the same powerplant and body as the Mercury Cyclone. Car Life, testing a Cobra that same month, compared it with a Cyclone it had tested the previous year: the Mercury, about 100 pounds lighter and fitted with the optional handling package, had leaned less, and Holman and Moody had made sure it was running right. The Cyclone was a Mercury in trim, badges and price, and a Ford in almost everything that made it go.^5,6

The more consequential twin raced on the superspeedways. The NASCAR Hall of Fame's history of the aero wars records Dodge announcing the flush-grilled Charger 500 in the fall of 1968 and Ford answering with long-nose versions of its race cars, the Torino Talladega and the Mercury Cyclone Spoiler. Wikipedia's Spoiler II article says the Mercury's new nose added about six inches, that the race cars first used the 427 side-oiler and later the Boss 429 once that engine was homologated, and that NASCAR required at least 500 cars to be built and offered for sale in 1969 before a body could race.^7,8

Mercury sold its racing identity through two drivers. The Talladega and Spoiler Registry records 969 Cyclone Spoilers, 352 Dan Gurney Specials and 617 Cale Yarborough Specials, all built at Lorain on body code 63A or 63C, with the 390 four-barrel or the 428 Cobra Jet with or without Ram Air, and painted in two combinations: code MX, white with Presidential Blue, for Gurney cars and code MT, white with red, for Yarborough cars. Over-Drive describes the Spoiler's S-code 390 as a 325-horsepower engine with a 735-cfm Holley, against the 320 horsepower in its own engine table, and does not reconcile the two.^9,10,3

The Spoiler II was the homologation car, and it came in one specification. The registry records 503 built at Lorain, 218 Gurney and 285 Yarborough cars, all on body code 63A with the 351 Windsor four-barrel, an FMX automatic and a 3.25 axle, and notes one heater-delete car of each edition; Gurney cars used blue vinyl bench trim and Yarborough cars red. Over-Drive also says approximately 503. Wikipedia agrees on 503 and 285 but gives 215 Gurney cars, which does not add up to its own total, and a 519 figure repeated on secondary sites has no stated record behind it. The racing nose went to the public on a 351 automatic, not the Cobra Jet.^10,3,8

Yarborough gave the name its results. The NASCAR Hall of Fame's account of his Wood Brothers years puts him in the No. 21 Mercury, with 1969 victories at Atlanta and at Michigan International Speedway, and the Hall's 1969 season history notes that the Michigan win, on June 15, was the track's inaugural race. Over-Drive counts four Mercury Grand National wins in 1969, and Wikipedia credits the Spoiler II with eight across 1969 and 1970, matching the Plymouth Superbird's total. The Hall's aero-wars history counts 26 wins for Ford in 1969 against Dodge's 22 without separating Mercury, and David Pearson took the title in a Holman-Moody Ford.^11,12,3,8,7

The Mercury aero program ended with Ford's. The Talladega and Spoiler Registry reports that two 1970 Spoiler II prototypes with a sloping, grille-less nose were built and that one survives, and it attributes the project's end to Ford's withdrawal from racing and to NASCAR raising the homologation minimum from 500 cars to 3,000. For 1971, the Hall of Fame says, NASCAR rewrote its rulebook to legislate the aero cars out of existence. That leaves 1969 as the only year the long-nose Cyclone was a showroom Mercury, sold in two drivers' colours to 1,472 buyers by the registry's combined Spoiler and Spoiler II counts.^13,7,9,10