Robbie Price and his dad Howy, just completed a 2 -1/2 year build of a 1972 Mercury Marquis Station Wagon. The goal was to build the wagon for drag and drive events. They just successfully completed their first ever event at One Guys Garage 2022 Drag Weekend in mid September. The event is based like Hot Rod's Dragweek but instead of 7 days, it's 3 days, driving to 3 tracks plus racing. Starting with a meeting at Tri State Raceway, Earlville, IA. then to Cordova International Raceway in Cordova Il., then to Byron Dragway in Byron,Il. and finally back to Tri State Raceway putting on close to 500 miles.
Having owned the wagon for nearly 12 years the father and son replaced the stock 429 big block with a SBE (stock bottom end) 6.0L LS with two stages of 200 shot progressive nitrous, shifted through a PerformaBuilt 4L60E black edition transmission with a trans brake. A ford 9" truetrac with 3.70 gears handles the power in the rear. A Haltech Nexus R5 computer system was also installed to manage the engine and tuned by Richard Nelson. All the trick copper lines were fabricated by Robbie's dad Howy who is a plumber by trade. The guys and gals were excited to run their fastest pass with a 12.91@at104.08mph at Byron with only 2 stages of 30 shots of nitrous. The next day they set their best personal time again with a 12.417 at 106.87mph also with 2 stages of 30 shots of nitrous.
Below is the story about the car told by Robbie...
I have grown up around racing my entire life and it was always my dream to have my own race car. The car originally belonged to one of my Grandpa's best friends and the car was originally going to be willed to my dad, but the car just sat in his garage and he told my Dad to come get the car and wanted to see him enjoy it. I fell in love with the car instantly when I was about 12 years old. My Dad bought a procharged C5 corvette when I was 18 years old and he then gifted me the station wagon. I told my Dad one day that when I graduate college I'm going to build the station wagon to beat you...his response was "I'm going to help you" with a huge smile on his face. As soon as I graduated college 1.5 years ago, we started our project by gutting the car and cutting off the front frame to put a Crown Vic front end in the car. Building the car with my dad are memories I will never forget and cherish forever.
My hopes and dreams for the car is to be able to beat my Dad's mid 9 second corvette but have the car streetable to where we can drive it to all the races. Our overall goal is to take both the corvette and my station wagon and do drag and drive events with my Dad as Hot Rod Drag Week has always been a dream of ours.
This car is so special to my family and me because when I was a kid and my Dad and I went to pick it up, we drove it home and my Dad pulled the car directly in the front yard and my mom came storming out of the house and her exact words were "You get that Ugly F****ing thing out of my yard right now!" My Dad and I died laughing and we tried to convince her to go for a ride and she refused. So the next weekend, we went and got a sticker made for the back window of the car that said "Sheila's Dream" and she was not overly thrilled about that either. She then ended up going for a ride in the car and absolutely fell in love with it. The following Mother's Day of when we got the car, we had all of us kids, her nieces, nephews and Grandkids over and everyone just played in the car along with the dogs all day long and made about 5 trips through our local ice cream shop so everyone could ride in the car. To this day, my mom talks about that day as being the best Mother's day she has ever had. Now she is in love with the car and the car's name is and always will be "Sheila's Dream."
When I was about 15 years old, I started racing RC cars and my Dad and I would travel in Wisconsin all summer long to go to the RC races and we used the Station wagon to haul all of my RC cars and equipment and we would camp inside the back of the car at the tracks. I have so many great memories with this car along with my entire family and we are so excited for this build to just add another chapter of this car's story. Special thanks to Robbie for the use of the cool video in the intro! #mercury #stationwagon #marquis
23 окт 2022
