A Minnesota car enthusiast hopes Lorain-area residents may have long lost secrets for putting the final finish on a Mercury muscle car.

Chris Vick, 58, of Duluth, is a lifelong Ford driver who has worked on dozens of automotive restorations for himself, family and friends.

Vick's latest project is a 1969 Mercury Cyclone Spoiler II^[1] that was built at Ford's Lorain Assembly Plant^[2].

"My goal is to build a car that will take first place anywhere in town, and I can do that," he said.

Advertisement

In the process of auto restoration, Vick has found nuts and bolts and parts and cars – but one thing remains missing.

Across the nation, it appears no one who restores the classic Mercury racers ever consulted someone who could explain exactly how the workers put together and painted the Cyclone Spoiler IIs at Ford's Lorain Assembly Plant.

"The question is, how were these cars painted in the factory?" Vick asked. "We also have no idea how the front fenders were built."

Vick hopes to find that out and reproduce the process on his own Mercury. He reached out to The Morning Journal to seek help from the Lorain community.

The goal is to have other owners scratching their heads over how Vick accomplished the most authentic Mercury Cyclone Spoiler II restoration paint job ever.

It sounds like a simple task, except for the bodywork, the paint and the relative rarity of the car, Vick said.

The Mercury Cyclone Spoiler II race cars were built with an extended nose to improve aerodynamics and go faster. But at the time, for a race car to get on the track, NASCAR required American automakers to make at least 500 of them, Vick said.

The Cyclone Spoiler II's sported a two-tone paint job: mostly white, but with red accents to honor driver Cale Yarborough^[3] or blue accents dedicated to racer Dan Gurney^[4].

The Lorain Ford plant built 509 Cyclone Spoiler IIs in 1969, according to an April 6, 1969, Journal article.

That is a lot of cars, but by comparison, in the same year, Ford pumped out 310,454 Mustangs^[5], not counting the souped up Shelby Mustang models, according to one online resource.

Thus, Vick's car is vastly different from Ford and Mercury's pony cars and family haulers of the late 1960s.

Vick acknowledged the details of the late '60s process may be lost forever.

The 1969 Journal article reported Yarborough's win in the Atlanta "500" stock car race. His car was built in Lorain.

By the passage of time, a worker who was 20 years old on Yarborough's victory day would be 68 years old now.

So some local residents might have been young workers at the Lorain plant in the golden age of American muscle cars. Or they might have family members who worked at the plant.

The 1969 article included the names of Ford workers James Silva, J.R. Ellison and Joe Tramontana of Lorain and Ted Krause of Amherst. It stated Robert Murray and Roy Heading supervised the building of the Mercury Spoiler II in Lorain.

Vick said at least one other classic car enthusiast dubbed him "The Archaeologist" for digging deep into the history of the Cyclone Spoiler II.

"I've learned way more than anybody else has, but out of necessity, not because I wanted to," Vick said. "Seeing as I have to go to this level, I may as well go one step further and really make it look like it came right off the showroom floor."

Anyone with information can call Vick at 651-755-0304.