When this 1962 Mercury Comet Custom Villager first showed up on Bring a Trailer in December of 2020, it was love at first sight. Normally a bastion of Porsches and BMWs, I loved the fact that this Villager was nestled right in the middle of them all on BaT.

I snickered at the thought of someone posting, “I can’t believe BaT listed this, but turned down my 2017 Lamborari Velvet Wraith 798ti Cabriowagon with only 2,000 miles on it. I had even just replaced the halogen in the headlights and switched the tires from summer to winter air.” And then blame it on new Hearst ownership and an overall decline in the collector and exotic car market in general due to the political decline of the country due to environmental concerns and the advancement of the agenda of the elite.

And if that helped him fall asleep at night and wake up able to look himself in the mirror long enough to check and see if the new hair plugs were taking root, then the world was a better place.

But this 1962 Mercury Comet Custom Villager had earned a respect that only comes from being around the block more than a few times. Beauty is only skin deep. Patina goes all the way to the bone.

This American classic could have been sold brand new off the showroom floor to a guy walking into Level Land Lincoln – Mercury. He had just been promoted to Assistant Vice Principal at Fort Stockton Middle School and wanted to show off a little to the missus without alienating the math department. By the time he traded it in seven years later for a new Montego sedan, the paint was as faded as his dreams and the wood was as worn as his nerves.

The second owner could have been a single mother of three who waitressed at the Western Sizzler and was just hoping she could afford to keep it running in order to put food on the table. She fed her young boys with what she could bring home at the end of her shift, and Kraft Macaroni & Cheese. Sometimes there was only enough for the boys to eat. She may have missed a payment or three and after the Dusty Plains Savings & Loan took it back it wound up on a Tote-the-Note lot located between the No-Tell Motel and the Hellbent Tattoo Parlor in the part of Fort Stockton that people who were born here knew to avoid. The only thing accumulating faster than the miles on this little Mercury were the puddles of fluid underneath each end of the Comet.

By ’86 someone could have picked it up at a garage sale for a couple hundred bucks because his uncle had one like it and it reminded him of his youth. He was going to restore it. “It’ll be like brand new again, just like when Uncle Donny owned his,” he told his neighbor next door. His neighbor hoped it would be soon because it was an eyesore. But all of his extra resources went to unfiltered Camels and six packs of Colt 45. The Comet sat under a carport in the same spot gathering maple leaves and mouse droppings until his relatives donated it to a local charity in order to settle the estate and clear out the carport for the new owners.

The next owner may have picked it up for a song. He thought it was the perfect car to rat-rod and give as a gift to his 16 year old son, soon to get his license. But, of course, his son had a girlfriend who would not have been caught dead in such a thing. The plans were scrapped to bond with the kid while they worked on it together. And then so was the girlfriend. But by then the kid was on to other things, and Dad had lost interest in both. But it was running and the seats were recovered. The owner just wanted to recover the cost of parts he’d put into it. The labor had been one of love, and there can be no repayment for that. Even if it is not returned.

The next owner gave all they had to buy it, not because of how it looked, but for what it offered. A place to sleep. Parked behind the Piggly Wiggly it was home till they could get back on their feet. “You do what you have to do until your luck changes. It’s gonna change soon,” he told Officer Phil. Officer Phil looked the other way as long as he could. One day the little Comet wagon was gone. So was the owner. Both seeking redemption and a second chance. Or third, maybe fourth. Who’s counting?

Every car is a story. Some are a trilogy. This one represents an entire anthology. The very same vehicle can be a source of pride, pain, hope, or grief. To one owner an honor, to the next a humiliation, to someone even a home.

I remember when my oldest daughter was being treated for cancer as a ten-year-old. She’d take her “Woobie” with her every time she went in for chemo, and later radiation. It was a blanket she’d had since she was a baby. It was threadbare and ratty, to say the least. But it provided her a level of comfort that no human could offer.

One day, we got back home from treatment and realized the “Woobie” had been left behind at the hospital.  We made a desperate run back to the hospital. We checked every room and facility we’d been in that day.  We asked countless nurses, aides, and janitors if they’d seen it.  “Woobie” couldn’t be found.  Finally, a nurse who had been helping us tried to explain that it had probably been thrown away, not realizing how important it was to the little girl who’d brought it in.

“Thrown away?” my daughter cried. “How could they have thrown it away? Couldn’t they tell how much it had been loved?” I would suggest this 1962 Mercury Comet Custom Villager is an automotive “Woobie”. It might look like trash to someone pedaling a Porsche on the same site. But they weren’t able to see how much it had been loved.

There are many different tales to this Comet. The most important one is the next one that will be written. I wish I could know who’d won the auction, and what the chapter was they were writing. It only sold for $8,000; I wish I’d bought it and I was writing the next one, myself. Maybe I’ll go ahead and write one, anyway. The little Comet deserves another chapter.