As you can probably see from the pictures that are loading below, this little 202 is in need of some work. My wife and I refer to it as "the ugly Comet". Before I started working on it, I would pick her up in it to try and embarrass her by being seen in this 'fairly flawed' car.

The only reason I bought it is because I feared for it's future. I believed it might possibly end up a junkyard dog, or a "faded Comet" as I have referred to them on the home page. I bought it last year from the gentleman in southern PA that I bought my '65 show Cyclone from. He had bought the car for parts (he couldn't bear to do it), and it sat under a tree in his driveway, covered with a tarp. I bugged him to show it to me, with no real prodding needed. I saw that it was a Comet in need of attention. It was also the 1^st 202 I had ever seen…still for sale & up close.

As you probably already know, the 202's are the 'poor stepson' of the Cyclone and, the poor man's version of the Caliente. It's a no frills Comet. It has a completely different roofline as it is approx. 2 inches or so taller than the Caliente or Cyclone. The rear roofline and glass does not reach near as far toward the rear of the car as the Caliente and Cyclone. It's not a hardtop, but a sedan. The rear trim is deleted, and the interior is pretty sparse. It was the economy minded Mercury of the day.

I paid about 400 bucks for the car, and promptly put 800 in it just to make it roadworthy. It needed brakes and wheel cylinders all the way around. I got new stainless brake lines for it from Auto Krafters, and a new master cyl was installed. New tires, wheel bearings, seals etc. Anything that hit the actual roadway was replaced. The motor was gone over, the head was gone over, and new springs and valves, and sleeves were installed.

My wife and I took it on its maiden voyage to Ocean City MD, which is an approx. 4-hour drive. That was a mistake. It kind of 'hummed" along they way during it's trip. The motor was just fine. It was something in the drivetrain under the car. It was a slight noise for the most part until…. On the way home on the PA turnpike, the car started really humming, 70 MPH and the vibration and humming got really bad really quickly. I slowed down to take the shoulder when my rearview mirror was filled with scenes large pieces of bellhousing and gears from the little 3-speed tranny. The tranny had apparently 'froze up' because of bad bearings that simply couldn't take it anymore.

Luckily; having AAA and a friend living close by to pick up the wife and I, we got the car back to where it was bought to have a new 3 speed that I bought from a local junkyard installed. The previous owner had given me an extra bellhousing, so it's wasn't too horrible that all this happened. The wife and I kind of laughed it off that day, as it all happened so suddenly, and no one was hurt. Even the Ugly Comet would not need much time to heal. I gathered the big pieces off of the road, and we were on our way home late that night.

My '65 Comet 202 has the straight six 200 C.I., one barrel, 3 speed manual shift on the column (3 on the tree). It's not a show car (and it never will be), I bought it to drive it! I drive it and a 64 Comet 202 with a 170 C.I. (it is in the photo gallery) to work almost every day interchangeably. If something is wrong with one, I use the other one until I can have a chance to fix it. It's a little ugly, and it has some rust that wants to try to become a problem, but I refuse to let it.

Right now, this car is sitting in my garage with a good 60 percent of the body sanded down to bare metal. I have put very little putty in to smooth some of the indentations too small to repair. It should look pretty decent when I am finished. I have done some bodywork before, but I have never painted a car. I plan to paint this one, and I am excited about doing so. It should be getting its new paint in April 2000 when things hopefully warm up enough for me to get priming. I hope to have the car totally ready for paint by then.

I will add the new bare metal body pictures of this car in December for you to take a gander at….