Thanks for the tour of Mercsville. So many fine looking customs!!!!! Can only happen here on the HAMB.
Rik, I am so thrilled that you got to make the trip for this show. I have no doubt that you are still catching up on sleep . Your photos are amazing, almost 3-D like!!!! I can't wait to see more and read more history!!!! PM me when your ready for me to send you the items we talked about before your amazing trip
I thought your video post was incredible. This is even better!!!!!! Amazing pics, it made me feel like I was there. Thanks so much!!
Rik, Thank you so much for taking the time to shoot all of the GREAT photos and give play by play on what you learned. I didn't make it to the show but I'm really glad that you were able to see these moving pieces of art. And the short movies are priceless. I wish they did the Merc building at the GNRS ! Maybe 2010 ? Rob
Fantastic coverage of the show, Rik. It was a very special weekend for all of us seeing these famous Mercuries, meeting you, meeting a lot of the builders (both old and new), and having the opportunity to see the details on these cars that you can easily overlook in photographs. Hats off to Axle, Chip Chipman, and Rik Hoving for their contributions...it is something I will never forget. And thanks again Rik for my Thriftys parking lot Custom Carshow poster...
Thanks! for such a great presentation of photos im sure it took alot of work to put this together and I just wanted to say you did a fantastic job in taking and displaying your wonderful photos 2 Thumbs up to you rik! lots of nice Mercs and tons of History there too great show!
What a Thread!! I have just messed myself with all those Mercs under one roof!! I now have something to aspire to and look forward to learning more history through your narrative. KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK RIKSTER - YOU GURU YOU!!
Incredible! an amazing accomplishment by the organizers. Wish I could have been there. Thanks Rik for fantastic pictures, and almost tricking me into beliving I was there
THANK YOU RIK!!! The history and comments are greatly appreciated. The maroon on the 2nd version of the Testa Merc is very nice.
this is why i come here!!..for posts like this,,,THANKS Rickster,,,, great pictures and commentary....i will look at this post many times...
Great thread Rikster. Very respectful. I'll be over at Kelsey Martin's this Saturday and I'm going to show him your pictures of the Topper House 56 Merc. He'll flip. He built the car decades ago and he even has has pix of that car sitting next to a stock 56.
RIK,RIK,RIK!!!!!you outdid yourself.Great presentation of all the cars!I feel like i was there.Thanks again for the great coverage.
One of the topics that kept coming back all weekend was the story on the Jerry Quesnel '49 Mercury. And how and when it was chopped, and that it perhaps was chopped before the Sam Barris 1949 Mercury. We all know that Jeff Neppl and Javier Mejia both where very much inspired by this Barris/Quesnel masterpiece. And both owners succeeded very well in their attempts to capture the look of that car. Perhaps Jeff's car captures the look the best of both. The stance and the feel of the car just makes it a little bit more period, like it could have been built by Sam. Especially now with the semi gloss paint awaiting the final gloss paint, just like jerry when it was in all white primer. Javier Mejia's 1950 Mercury with body work by John Aiello Jeff Neppl's fine 1950 Mercury with the last Dick Dean chop... Jeff had recently talked to Jerry Quesnel about his old car, and how he was so much inspired by it. Jerry told Jeff the story about how he had brought home the brand new '49 Mercury. And how he had cut the top of the same evening in his parents drive way. His father woke him up early in the morning telling him to come down quick to see what they had done to his brand new car... and that he moved to a better neighborhood to never have something like this happening to him again. Of coarse Jerry told his father he had cut the top of himself. The story does not tell the fathers reaction, but I guess we can all imagine what that would have been. Jerry then brought the car with the top cut of to Sam Barris, and together they performed the chop. And according to Jerry this was the first ever Chopped 49 Mercury. Sam Barris with the white primered Quesnel Mercury (Photo from one of the Barris books) The story does make sense, since the chop on Jerry's top is done in a much similar way as one would chop a 41-48 Ford top, while Sam's chop is much more straight forward. Like he learned from doing Jerry top how he could do a cleaner, and much easier job on his own car. However there are a few inaccuracies in the story. Jerry tells he chopped the car when it was brand new. But there are photos of the car with a smoothed trunk and the taillights set into the bumper guard... but the top was not chopped then. Plus it ran 1951 Plates when the car was not chopped yet. The reason for me to bring this up, is not only because ti like stories like this, and it would be really cool to know which car was first. I still think that multiple 49 Mercs where chopped at about the same time. But the Sam Barris Merc was generally accepted as being the first, because it was better promoted than the others. But I also bring this up because John Barris held a very nice talk about his father Sam Barris, and brought some wonderful stuff to show. One of the things he brought was a photo album with photos taken by Marcia Campbell of the whole process of chopping the Jerry Quesnel Mercury. This photo book was sure one of the many highlights of the show. Marcia Campbell took a lot of photos of the custom cars at the Barris shop and any where published in the early 50's magazines/books. And she even owned a few very find custom cars. Marcia Campbell owned this Barris Chevy (the model is not Marcia Campbell as I though it was. Thanks for that Cleatus.) The Book that Sam Barris gave to his son John. It is a photo journal of how the Jerry Quesnel Mercury was chopped. I had to take photos of this book real fast, did not get all the photos and the lighting was very poor so some are a bit blurry.... And looking at these photos makes me believe 00MACK has been right all this time The car with the stock top, but smoothed trunk and rear fenders and taillights set in the bumper guards. License plate reads 1951 I have no idea where this poster comes from but it looks to be numbered 328/500... John also brought that to show. And the finished car... well in white primer. Later the car would be painted deep dark purple and the one bar ripple flipper hubcaps where replaced with Caddy Sombrero's Barris Photo
Thanks... learned something again. I should have checked my Barris books better The model is Donna Greva. Do you perhaps know if Marcia Campbell is still around today? I can imagine she must have a wonderful archive... if she still has all her old negatives and prints.
We actually tried to locate her, but it is hard with women since they get married and change their last names. I was told she hung around the shop alot because she had a bit of a crush on Sam and liked customs and took a lot of pics. That's why we wanted to find her & see if she had a stash of pics that had not been seen. (I'm sure that if Marcia actually looked like that Donna Greva chick that 'ol Sam would have had a crush right back )
Rik, Again, i want to thank you for not only flying out to see what Celeste and I did with this Merc gathering, but documenting everything you possibly could. Your stories are dead on and your photography is perfect. I wish i could of invested as much time taking everything in as you did but as you know i simply did not have the time. The questions,rumors, theories of "Who's Merc was chopped first" can now be rested. I don't know about you or anyone else, but for me , John Barris bringing that photo album to the panel discussion was meant to be and sort of an ironic twist to us younger die hard car guys. It literally blew me away to see that ONE photo of the Quesnel Merc unchopped in 1951. What you either didn't know or forgot to mention is that John barris thought those photo's on the album were of his dads (Sam) 49 Merc. He didn't know until all of us told him who's car it was. Look forward to seeing full article's in Kustoms Illustrated, Rodders Journal, Rod & Custom, and an article with photo's done by myself in the next issue of Hop Up. All the best, Axle & Celeste p.s. Mark Morton for president !
What's funny is that I had told John B. a couple of years ago that it was not Sam's car in the album. The story goes like this: John loaned me a whole big box full of photos and inside that box was that album, but all the photos were missing out of it - it was empty. But inside the big box, I kept finding photos of a Merc being chopped and after I gathered all the matching photos together, I realized it was a series and that they all belonged in the blank album by Marcia, so I put them all back in there in the right order and when I gave the photos back to John, I told him what is was (and that it was the Quesnel car - which you could tell by the last photo in the series which shows the same photo of the back of the car as appears in one of the Barris books), and I told him that he should guard it like gold because it was a priceless piece of custom history. Of course, before I put them all back in the album - I did high-resolution scans of the whole thing
WOW!!!! how cool to see those marcia campbell photos...HISTORY,,,,,, i once thought of making a clone of her car,,it was a great looking chevy,, where else could you see stuff like this?,,the HAMB rules!!!!!!!
The Jalopy Journal
