A genuine 370 hp 1970 Mercury Cyclone Spoiler with Merc-O-Matic! (see below), and genuine Miss Mississippi, and Miss Mississippi USA, Jalin Wood www.JalinWood.com
For a magazine article & calendar.

Thanks to Classic Corvettes & Collectables www.ClassicCorvettes.com
To Photographer's Gallery of Images




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Some of the top-10 highest prices paid for muscle cars last year at the hot auction houses, like Barrett-Jackson, were for 1969 Torino-Talladegas. Ford's Cobra Jets are also quite in demand.

Those cars are already bringing top prices. Wouldn't you like to find a great muscle car before it peaks?

Despite the disagreements over when muscle cars actually began, and what is even a muscle car at all, it's pretty much agreed that OPEC killed them in 1970. Production fell in 1971, and continued to plummet quickly as horsepower was neutered and manufacturers began advertising the roominess of their back seats instead of acceleration numbers. By 1973, they were gone. But who's complaining about the loss of American muscle cars when today you can instead vacation in Dubai's Burj Al Arab hotel, gilded inside with real gold, for only $1,160 per night, in the off-season. Or maybe you could drive a muscle car over there, where gas is under a buck a gallon. Whee.

Before 1970 it was as if Mercury was just not going to "get it" with muscle cars. Mercury always seems a bit unlucky, or slow, in the marketing department. Maybe they like to hold back and test the waters a little too much. But when they do jump in, as they did with the Cyclone Spoiler, it's well done, even if too late to catch the big wave.

It wasn't for lack of trying. Mercury's 1968 Cougar GTE held great promise, but never caught on. For 1969 Mercury honored NASCAR drivers with special edition Cyclone Spoilers. And their 1969 Cyclone CJ (Cobra Jet) was their fastest, with ETs in the high 13s. They built 519 of the Spoiler fastbacks to homologate for NASCAR. And Mercury's Cougar Eliminator matched the Mach I Mustang, but again did not seem to have everything it needed in the right place. It was even a better-balanced car without the highest-horsepower motor.

For 1970 Mercury made a cleaner break from Ford and built on their new redesigned Montego. The Cyclone Spoiler was a "C-Code" car, with a 429 cubic inch 4V cobra jet V8 pumping a beefy 370 horsepower through a C6 Merc-o-Matic (could the corny names be one reason Mercury is not easily associated with Muscle?) transmission, 3.00 traction lok differential, plus Mercury's luxury appointments, including the factory luxury gauge package and factory air conditioning. The extra luxuries and associated extra pounds of weight could be one reason Mercury did not get as much respect as, say, the stripped Yenko Deuce Nova LT-1, but "Merc-O-Matic" didn't help.

 The Montego body was longer and a bit more elegant, but sported this curious square nose piece that looks a little like a casket, or maybe that's where a hand-crank lever should go. Maybe it's part of the Merc-O-Matic.

To the base Montego, buyers could upgrade to the Cyclone, which would cost $3,238. You got 370 hp and an available Ram Air setup. A nice car, actually. But if you really wanted to go the next step, if your devious side had to embarass the neighbors with their name-brand muscle, you paid $3,530 for the Cyclone Spoiler. And then the neightbors knew something was up because it came with....a spoiler. Maybe it was a "Merc-O-Spoiler" - no indication that it was functional. But the car did also get a front air dam, functional hood scoop, high-back bucket seats, better gauges, competition handling package, Hurst T-handle shifter, and a 140-mph speedometer. They may miss the Mer-O-Spoiler, so Mercury painted them in six loud "Merc-O-Grabber" colors: blue, orange, green, coral, platinum, and this Competition Yellow, with "Cyclone Spoiler" stickers.

Road Test magazine proclaimed the wonderful 429 exhaust note had "a solid pleasing roar reminiscent of a NASCAR stocker and highly pleasing..."

Only 1,600 Cyclone Spoilers were ever built, only 268 in this Competition Yellow, even fewer with these options, and perhaps only a handful survive. The records on these are not as clear as with the bigger-named cars because few people realize what these were. Too many rotted in salvage yards, or back yards, without much attention.

But people do not realize that a Cyclone Spoiler can blow away the hot GTOs and Chevelles. On bias-ply street tires it ran 14.10s in the quarter mile

One other aspect that might make this car more valuable than it appears is that it suffered from a fate similar to that of the Torino-Talladega. That car also had a strange nose, an elongated front clip that was supposed to make it more slippery on high-speed tracks, a la Superbird, but which actually hurt the car and doomed its production. Maybe Mercury should have instead emphasised the Cyclone Spoiler's "Merc-O-Nose."

Fashion, glamor, glamour model, Jalin Wood, Mercury Cyclone Spoiler, Birmingham, Alabama -- --