The Mercury Turnpike Cruiser is a 2-door hardtop / 4-door hardtop sedan / 2-door convertible from Mercury, built from 1957, at the height of the post-war boom. Under the bonnet: 368 cuin Y-Block V8.
How it came about
The Mercury Turnpike Cruiser is a series of automobiles that were produced by the Mercury division of Ford for the 1957 and 1958 model years. Named to commemorate the creation of the Interstate Highway System, the Turnpike Cruiser was marketed as the flagship Mercury model line, slotted above the Montclair when Mercury was positioned upmarket to luxury status when Edsel was introduced in 1958. The Turnpike Cruiser was produced as a luxury two-door and a four-door hardtop sedan.
During the 1957 model year, a convertible, called the Convertible Cruiser, was offered on a limited basis, which served as a pace car for the Indianapolis 500 auto race. Mercury fitted the Turnpike Cruiser with a wide variety of advanced features for the time of its production, including a retractable rear window marketed as the "Breezeway", compound-curve windshield, mechanical pushbutton transmission controls and a trip computer. In total, 23,268 examples of the Turnpike Cruiser were produced over two years. Mercury discontinued the Turnpike Cruiser for the 1958 model year, phasing its content into the Park Lane product line.
The hardware
Power comes from 368 cuin Y-Block V8; other versions carried different engines, listed in the specification table below. It weighs 4015 lb. It shifts through a 3-speed Merc-O-Matic automatic. The layout matters: a front engine drives the rear wheels, the classic proportion — long bonnet, cabin set back — that most people picture when they picture a sports saloon or a grand tourer. The wheelbase is 122 in. These are manufacturer figures carried by Wikipedia and Wikidata, not road-test measurements.
Family and rivals
Its family tree is legible: its successor was the Mercury Park Lane; assembly was at Main plant. Its contemporaries in the catalogue — the Nissan Skyline, the Fiat 500, the Dodge Challenger — show what else the money bought that year. Its Mercury stablemates include the Mercury Bobcat and the Mercury Capri.
What it costs now
There is no federal ownership record for the Mercury Turnpike Cruiser — it predates the complaint database or was never sold in the United States — so MotorJury publishes no running-cost figure for it. For a car of this age the price is set by the collector market and the condition of the individual example, not by a formula.