Can anyone tell me what car this is?
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I remember that car, kinda. I think it was supposedly based on a 49/50 Merc. Theoretically.
At the time, one could order the poster from BFG or something. They did a marketing campaign with several different posters featuring over the top cars. I can’t recall the actual details, who built it, etc. Sorry I am not much more help.
Mitch
I remember that car too, it’s a Mercury and I think it was built by Larry Kramer, a well known builder in the 80’s-90’s.
Found this on internet:
Merrodder, a radically customized 1949 Mercury designed by Larry Erickson and built by Larry Kramer, first debuted in 1993. The body received a two-foot reduction in overall length, a cowl and windshield from a 1988 Camaro, a Kevlar lift-off top, custom tube grilles front and rear and enough sectioning and pie-cutting and body sculpturing to make it hardly recognizable as a Mercury. Kramer set the body on a custom tube frame with 1993 Corvette running gear and a Donnie Everett-built 510-cu.in. big-block Chevrolet V-8 with Thunder Power 32-valve aluminum cylinder heads and custom electronic fuel injection. He then had Sneed’s stitch up the interior for owner C.K. Spurlock.
In the intervening decade and a half, Merrodder came under the aegis of Dynamat’s Scott Whitaker, who left the basic body design and shape alone, but replaced the billet tube grilles with a front mesh grille and rear bumper, replaced the wheels with Billet Specialties wheels fitted with knockoffs and ironed out a few other details.
Whitaker showed the refreshed Merrodder at last year’s SEMA show in Las Vegas, then took it to Darryl Starbird’s 45th annual National Rod and Custom Car Show in Tulsa, Oklahoma, over the weekend, where Merrodder took the Go for the Gold cash award.
(This post originally appeared in the February 26, 2009, issue of the Hemmings eWeekly Newsletter.)I remember that car. A pointless exercise in many ways. Didn’t like it then…and it hasn’t grown on me.
I saw the car in person at the 2009 Sacramento Autorama. I had been updated some at that point.
It was neat to see it in person after having seen it in the 1990’s magazines. But the overall design and appearance just did not work for me. I only took three pictures of it… says enough. Here are two of them.
Enjoy the beauty of Customizing
Yes Rik! I was thinking I’d seen the car somewhere too. It was at Sacramento, I was there handling Mark Mortons’ Merc that year. I felt the same way too, in regards to the car. BUT, there sure is a lot of work and creativity that went into its build and creation. But there have been a lot of cars over the years we can say the same of, that and, “Why?”
Mitch
A lot of creativity, a LOT of work, but the starting point body could have been ANYTHING. Let’s face it, they my have started with a Merc shell, but that’s it, and they cut most of that away in any case. Saying it’s a customised Merc is just silly. It’s about 3% Mercury, 97% something else.
Rant over.
Tony, you’re absolutely right, 100%. Could have started from scratch and been ahead. Saved the Merc for better things. And even as Iconic as a car like Cadzilla, it is pretty much in the same category.
Mitch
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