Merc_5

My Brother, The Purple Derf, owned Mercatoy'd for many years before it became an ArtCar. Merc was his daily driver. He would drive it back and forth to work in upstate New York. Over the years the Mercury started rusting away, and the mileage was adding up. It ran fine, but he wanted a newer car that he felt might be more reliable on a long trip. He decided to replace Merc with a newer Mercury Sable. Merc sat on the side of his house from Easter of '99 until August of that same year. No one wanted Merc. He offered it to co-workers, friends, and family members.

I was looking for a project car around this same time. My brother said.." If you want this car, come up and get it..while you're here we'll play some golf." Well enough said...I got a plane ticket, and I left Florida and headed north. I had no idea what to expect about Merc other than it was pretty rusty, but ran good. That sounded fine to me.

We checked the car over for the trip back home to Florida..and I headed south. Merc ran great. It cost $54 in gas, not a bad initiation. I think Merc liked the idea of being back on the road again.

Once I got Merc home I started looking it over trying to decide what I would do to make it into an ArtCar. The lower part of the body was gone. Large gapping holes were right through the lower part of the fenders. Inside, the door sills were gone also. Rather than try to fix all the damage, I decided to encorporate it into the scheme. It would have to be "holey" something. Holey Cow..it was already white.., Rust-Hole-E-um, was a name given to me by Conrad Bladey. Then one day out of the blue it hit me... Holey Mercatoy'd. It was almost like one of those sayings on Batman. The more I thought about it, the better I liked it. It was full of Holes..it was a Merc.. and I liked the idea of lots of toys. Then the real brain storm came.. rather than fix the holes..why not make MORE. So, I took a stabilo pencil, and started to draw designs on the side. I spoke with my other brother Sam, who owns One Stop Body Shop, here in Florida. And I asked him if I could use a plasma torch to cut the designs out of the body without warping it too bad. He thought as long as I took my time, and didn't heat it up too bad, he didn't see any reason why it wouldn't work. Six hours later...full of holes it was. I stayed away from the doors because they have power windows and locks. I didn't want to get water down into the electrics inside the door. I figured, I would fill these holes with toys, and have a very unique ArtCar. Holey Mercatoy'd, was the perfect name.

I want to thank both my brothers for being there for me. Derf with the car and daily chat on talkcity, and Sam who lives right around the corner..where we can always play with car stuff.