My First Car: '52 Mercury, John Seevers, 62, Spring Hill

My First Car: '52 Mercury, John Seevers, 62, Spring Hill

'52 Mercury

My first car was a 1952 Mercury. It was 1958 and I was a junior in high school in Wichita, Kan. I had saved money from working in the library. My dream car was (and still is) the 1956 Mercury, but the '52 was all I could afford. It had a flathead-8 and a crummy transmission linkage. I thought I was doing better than my buddy who had a '51. It turns out he had the classic. The car served me well for a couple of years until a poor attempt at rings and valves, which resulted in my trading it for a sailboat and using my folks' old clunker — a 1951 Dodge Meadowbrook. It had the worst transmission (fluid drive) I have ever driven.