As enthusiasts, we like to imagine the ultimate supercars Detroit never had the nerve (or the interest) to build. For example, what about the Boss 429 Taladega we would've liked to have seen? Or the 460 Super Cobra Jet Mach 1 that never made it past 429 ci? What about the 289 Hi-Po Falcon Ranchero? These are but a few of the Ford factory musclecars the world never got a chance to see because they fell victim to bean counters and defeatist engineers with slide rules working overtime.
What about a '71 Mercury Cyclone Spoiler convertible? Robert Day dreamed of owning the Mercury Cyclone drop-top that never happened--so badly that he decided to build one himself. No kidding. He quite literally chopped off the top of a '71 Mercury Cyclone Spoiler and constructed the open-air muscle Merc Dearborn wouldn't hear of.
Day's Cyclone Spoiler convertible is the stuff dreams are made of. Just imagine the Mercury intermediate drop-top experience no one else has ever had. Wind through your hair to the tune of 351 Cleveland power. What's more--it's not a restomod, and it's not even a modified. It's like getting lost and winding up in Area 51 in the California desert with one whopper of a story to tell about something that no one has ever seen before. If no one was there to see it firsthand, who would believe you?
Exactly. This is why we're bringing you the Cyclone Spoiler no one had ever seen. We stumbled upon it in Pennsylvania and had to rub our eyes at first. Then we stood there, waiting to wake up, or waiting for the powers that be in the parallel universe to return us to Earth.
Day didn't opt for anything exotic besides the obvious. Under the hood and behind the wheel, it's all stock and in showroom condition. At a glance on the Pennsylvania Turnpike at speed, it's a nicely restored collector car someone did a nice job on, that is if you're not a Ford and Merc buff bent on accuracy. Then it flags like a flying saucer cruising in from the heavens. It isn't just another Cyclone Spoiler.
You have to hand it to Day for his execution of what should have been on the option sheet from Lincoln-Mercury some 28 years ago, which brings to mind an old, yet timeless adage--sometimes, you just have to do it yourself.