49 Mercury Kustom

2025-09-13T17:49:46Z

I got this AMT 49 as a terribly customized glue bomb from my friend. First I thought it is beyond rescue but then I decided to give it a try. So after I stripped off several paint layers and bondo I realised the roof had an extension piece in the middle and it was also heated and pressed down on the rear window area to get rid of the "bubble" that was left there due to the way the top chop was done so it was worse than I thought. But I kept going and first cut out the rear window frame and then took off the roof and removed the extension piece. Roof was too much chopped to my taste so I added some 2mm to the front pillars. Rear part I left on the height my friend had made and glued it back. Then I tilted the rear window frame in it's place and filled the gaps with styrene sheet pieces to get some smoothness to the lines. I wanted to have Hirohata-style sidewindows so I left the side pillars away. Then it was just filler, sanding, primer, again filler and sanding and primer many many times.

Rest of the body is pretty much untouched but I frenched the head and tail lights. I added some 2mm styrene pieces between the bezel and the front fender to get the head lights a bit further and get a bit more forms to the front end. Tail lights are from AMT 57 Chevy. Window and side trims and the Hirohata glass frames were made from Evergreen styrene rods. Styrene sheet was used also to build the fender skirts.

Paint is metallic red from a spray can that I bought from hardware store discount and with spray can clear on top of it. I am not happy how it turned out as I think I added too thick last layer and the paint made some wrinkles on the roof so I had to sand off the first round completely and of course the base for the new coat wasn't that good any more.

After a long thinking between several options I decided to use the Mercury kit's pretty simple custom grille bar. To avoid to have too much vertical bars in the front I removed the bumber guards and the bar between them and used Molotow chrome to "replate" it after the modifications.

Tires are AMT Firestones with handpainted white walls. Caddy Sombreros are from Replicas&Miniatures and are the only aftermarket parts in this build.

Interior is OOB, white with Revell gold 94 as accent color. Same color is used for the engine. Kit came to me with the Mopar big block which is a bit strange option for this kind of a car on my opinion and wanted to use something else. I found a Ford Y-block of unknown origin from my spare part box. Someone had installed a tri carb system on top of it which I think looked pretty cool so it was an easy decision to go with that. Found also a nicer pair of valve covers and exhaust manifolds. Added some wiring and throttle linkage to complete the engine. Frame is oob with a modest lowering on top of the kit's lowered custom version suspension.

Lots of work but also lots of fun with this build and it came out pretty much as I would build a 1:1 Mercury too. And lots of fun to show this to my friend and compare the outcome with the pictures of his build...

All comments are wellcome!

Kimmo