Music videos began, perhaps, with the movies of Elvis Presley. After all, most of his later films are literally a video clip in which everything that happens serves only as a background to the music of Elvis. Besides the King, other artists sometimes just recorded their concerts, which can also be called the first music videos.
In the 70s, all of this turned into a flood of promo videos – or, if you will, promo films – as well as the first real music videos, the purpose of which was to show them on television when the band could not appear with a live performance. By the mid-70s, music videos had already become an independent phenomenon, and were rapidly gaining popularity. In the early 80s, MTV appeared, and with the song Video Killed The Radio Star, the real era of video music began. And thanks to this era, there is a new wave of cars inextricably linked with rock and roll.
Of course, the custom scene was an integral part of rock before. For example, the Silver Sapphire that appeared on the cover of the Beach Boys' Little Deuce Coupe album became a legendary car overnight, and the subgenre of music from this record is called nothing other than "hot rod rock". Nevertheless, the video format definitely allowed cars to show themselves in all their glory, and the MTV era gave the world a lot of mechanical rock stars. One of them is David Lee Roth's Mercury, which appeared in Van Halen's Panama music video and Lee Roth's solo videos California Girls and A Lil' Ain't Enough.
Despite the fact that Panama is one of the most famous car songs with extremely awesome lyrics, and Mercury itself is very famous in the custom scene and has been auctioned several times, unfortunately, there are very few photos of this car in the public domain, and it’s quite difficult to find them. Most of them are mostly from the eighties: the direct owner of the car, David Lee Roth, is depicted in the car, in the car, next to the car, in many interviews and over the years. Lee Roth clearly loved this car and actively used it. However, all this scattering of footage relates more to Lee Roth than directly to Mercury. Somehow, the Phaeton from the Hot For Teacher video got much more detailed pictures and descriptions, although it happens much less often at auctions and starred in only one music video. Nevertheless, I managed to dig up enough photos and details to make an article, so let’s get started.
The first thing that needs to be mentioned is that two cars were actually built. One of them is George Barris, and the other is Dick Dean. One car was for Lee Roth, and the other was for promotional tours and auto shows. Externally, the cars do not differ much: only a couple of pinstripes, and a couple of coats of arms of Barris’ workshop. What kind of car was built for what purposes, in what order they were built, who was the author of the design – it’s hard to understand all this. One thing is for sure: in the Panama clip, as in most of the footage from the 80s, the car is without the Barris coat of arms. And at all auctions, there’s a car by George. And every auction confirms that it was Mercury from Barris’s star workshop that belonged to Comrade Lee Roth.
However, there are still 26 and a half thousand kilometers on the odometer in Barris' car. Yes, quite a bit for forty years old, but the same Hot For Teacher rolled out only a little more than 17. So someone drove this car sometimes anyway. And yes, the interior looks very spartan, but all the buttons and turntables on such Mercury are usually hidden from below, under the instrument panel, so there are probably a lot more interesting things that, unfortunately, did not get into the photos.
Anyway, these are a couple of very interesting Mercury. They look very standard, but every lover of lead sleds will quickly notice some very interesting details. First of all, it has a high landing, even higher than that of classic cars like Bob Hirohata’s Mercury. Secondly: there is a lot of chromium. The headlights and side stripe are not flooded – they almost never leave all this chrome. And thirdly: Lee Roth’s car, oddly enough, is a sedan, not a coupe. The design of the 1951 Mercury made it possible to turn the sedan into an unusual four-door convertible, which lacks a middle pillar: the rear doors are rear-hinged and are attached respectively to the rear pillar. All this originality is emphasized by a pair of very classic solutions, such as the popular toothy radiator grille from DeSoto and a pair of spotlights.
As for the filling, on the one hand, there is a 5.8-liter Ford engine under the hood. On the other hand, I could not find any photos of the engine, or even just a text clarification about which engine model is installed in this Mercury. Its factory output, depending on the year of manufacture, can be up to three hundred horsepower, and maybe even below two hundred. Anyway, the engine is connected to the Turbo 350 Hydra-Matic transmission, which stands for fully automatic and at three speeds. All this rides on an independent spring suspension in the front and springs in the rear. All brakes are disc brakes. At least, this was the configuration of the Mercury from George Barris’ workshop in 2023. What’s under the hood of the second Mercury, and where it is now, is anyone’s guess.
Below I also attach an interesting video captured on the arrival of David Lee Roth at the 1985 MTV Awards ceremony, where David appeared on his Mercury. On it, Comrade Lee Roth says that he bet his producer five thousand dollars that he would come to New York in this very car, driving it across America from the west coast of the United States to the east coast. Of course, it is impossible to say whether this was actually the case, but, on the whole, people agree that at that time such a dispute was quite in the spirit of Lee Roth.
Such old shots are the only ones where you can try to see the rear seats of a car that are not covered with a cover, and sometimes even notice the outlines of the Mercury's white roof.
I really hope that in the future I will have another reason to update this article with some details. Perhaps the next auction will tell you a little more about the car’s engine, or about its audio system, no matter how modest it is. And if you’re lucky, you’ll also find the second of these unusual four-door convertibles. And, by God, I really wonder if George Barris was the designer, or if he just built a replica of Dick Dean’s car. But anyway, this is definitely a very interesting car that captures the unusual California style of the 80s on the roads, on video and in music.
