1978 Mercury Colony Park

1978 Mercury Marquis Colony Park Station Wagon for sale on BaT Auctions - ending April 20 (Lot #104,625) | Bring a Trailer

 

Dark Jade Green was a popular FoMoCo paint color in ‘77 - ‘78, but very few wagons ordered with the color. Non correct hubcaps, but this one looks sharp.

 

Although these were new for 1977 I know those wire wheel covers were available on Fords. I’m sure Mercury’s offered a variant of that wheel cover, albeit these were more popular on the new LTD II. I always liked the more deluxe wheel cover pictured here as well and the heavy turbine looking one on the Mercury. I remember my mom had a ‘77 Monarch Ghia 4 door in triple Jade. Loved that color. Only problem it showed the dirt and salt pretty bad, but nothing prettier when it was cleaned and waxed. I have a ‘78 LTD wagon in light jade. It has the dark jade interior. My friends affectionately call it the Coleman camper interior. They’re kinda right lol.

 

Well mrvans I guess we were both right and wrong lol. I did some further digging, and this “style” of wheel cover was available for the Mercury, but albeit correct period and company, the Mercury wheel cover did have a variant in that the center cap, a bit larger, with more of an octagon shape would have been a black center with the Mercury emblem. Another case of right Church, wrong pew. These appear to be correct wheel covers for a Ford. Mercury wire wheel covers pictured below. Interesting that these theoretically were only available on Marquis, and not available for Brougham, and Grand Marquis. So by ‘77-‘78 the wagons were all Marquis, available with Colony Park option so I would imagine you could get the wires on a wagon. I have seen these on Colony Parks. Whew. Talk about TMI, but there’s a few of us wonky ones on here. Lol

 

My experience at a Pontiac dealer is that if they can, they will move anything from one car to another to make a sale.

 

Sold for $16,000 on 4/20/23

 

I was surprised to learn that Mercury used the style of wire wheel cover you described in '78. I knew they had used this style for several years on the Panther chassis Grand Marquis, but I hadn't realized that they'd introduced it in '78. The style the green CP is wearing is from 1977. It's just about identical to the '74 - '76 Elite wires. It actually came in 13", 14", and 15" covers and was available for all the Ford and Merc lines. It was used for a number of years -- up into the '80s -- on various car lines. I'm using a set of these on my '76 Mongeo Villager because I had to upsize the wheels to 15".

 

Yeah I didn’t see any mention of this wheel cover in the ‘77 big Merc. Brochure. But I knew they used that wheel cover on Montego’s and Cougars. This wire wheel was shown as available only on base Marquis models for ‘78, and of course those were very popular from ‘79 on up as the deluxe wire wheel covers disappeared on Fords after ‘78, as well as the heavy wires on the Mercury’s. That slotted full cap took a couple of year hiatus on the Mercury, but came back as a standard cover on the ‘83-‘84? ish models. Can’t remember too much water under the bridge. Lol

 

Right. I’m sure wheel covers were used and swapped around all the time.

 

As I recall my working one summer at a Chevy dealer parts department in 1972, I seem to remember that wheel covers came in two distinct types - those that were original equipment or optional from the the factory; and wheel covers that were dealer accessory items. For instance, the dealer accessory wire wheel covers were not necessarily the same covers as those offered from the factory.