JAMES DEAN FESTIVAL 1997, Rebel Run Car Show, Praise The Lowered
Updated 15 May 1998. URL is http://our.tentativetimes.net/nostalgia/rebelrun.html
If you are stuck in a frame at another site, click on this line to break freePraise The Lowered
The Mercillac Crisco Kid
Here’s Alfred and Ginny Gregory’s beautiful "Top-20 Mercurys" winner at the The James Dean Run car show, Fairmount Indiana, September 1997. It’s harder than I knew, to photograph a dark car. The car looks even better than this photo.
I called this car The Crisco Kid because it had undergone so darned much shortening. The wonderful owners let me visit with them a long time. Here is their story:
How This Mercillac Came To Be
Ginny Gregory wanted a James Dean car, and she got it, built especially for this very show by her husband, Alfred. He fortunately owns a foundry, so he could make all the parts they needed. The catch is that Ginnny doesn’t like the way the 50’s Mercurys ride. She said they ride too rough for her tastes. Soooo, enter the Mercillac.
This car’s body was covered in honeysuckle vines… out in a field… with a tree growing right up through the center of it. What vision it must have taken for Al to tackle it, and what self confidence! "Hi honey, here’s your new car!"
If only you could see the details of this beauty. The deck is a trunk lid. Hot metal louvres. The front bumper is modified stock. The bumper bullets are from a ’56 Chevrolet. The rear bumper is a modified Mercury, Pontiac-style.
From Cadillac parts, we have the drive train, dashboard, chassis, seats and floor. (I probably got that wrong.)
Back wing windows. Unusual metal rain visors for the vent windows. Lakes…. double or triple, I forget which…. I was just learning the words. Anyway I think they are just for show.
I was first struck by the blue molded-in seam along the side. Lots of attention to detail, it goes without saying.
At the show, the Kid had gorgeous laquer paint, the kind used long ago. Soon it will have new two staged paint, in the same fabulous deep blue color.
The Kid has its original Mercury rear-view mirrors. The insignia is a gold head of Mercury inside the Cadillac wreath. It’s well insulated inside (read "quiet",) and it rides as smoothly as Mrs. Gregory had dreamed of. I’ll write to the Gregorys and try to get better photos for you. It was about to storm that Sunday as I photographed it, and you deserve a better look. Thanks for visiting the Crisco Kid, and happy driving to you all.
Could it be that I am so excited about this car because I am club President of the Big Blue Car Club? Well, yes it could. Find out all about it here:
I Support Traditional 50’s Style Kustoms
Life is so weird! No sooner had we posted this page than we ran across a local website just put up by The Crisco Kid! No kidding! CJ has a lot of interests; his mom teaches at the Middle School here in Bluffton. But bookmark this site before you go, please!
Index of Otto’s main Dean pages
Or you might want to skip back to page two of the introduction to this year’s festival
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Muldoon’s Garage likes this site fine! Thanks, Harold and Sharon Muldoon.
Here’s a link to Cotton Candy, the webmaster of Cars of Ohio
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Otto is published by Terry L. Miller, email [email protected]
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Sandra Weinhardt
FUMBLING AROUND IN THE FIFTIES
email [email protected]
(Thanks to Todd Taylor for the Fumbling slogan; he said it suits me to a tee. He tried and tried to teach me all the terms in one day. Lakes. Chopped. Frenched. Hard to get it right!
since 15 January 1998.
