Guess the year, make and model!

This 1965 Mercury Comet wears the sponsor decals and drag-strip stance of a car built to race — and it’s channeling a genuinely wild piece of history. Roughly two dozen factory Comet Cyclones once terrorized NHRA’s A/FX class with dual-quad 427s under the hood, arguably helping invent the Funny Car along the way.

Sponsor decals down the flanks, a fat rear tire poking out from the wheel well, and a stance that says this 1965 Mercury Comet has seen a strip or two — cars like this one carry a lineage that most Comet owners never even knew existed. Fifty years before every project car had its own Instagram account, Mercury quietly built a small fleet of Comets that would go on to help invent an entire category of drag racing. This one wears the attitude; the real story is how much of that DNA cars like it actually carry forward.

The Comets Nobody Expected to Dominate A/FX

In 1964 Mercury built roughly two dozen special lightweight Comet Cyclones specifically to campaign in NHRA’s A/FX class, stuffing dual four-barrel 427 High Riser V8s under bespoke fiberglass hoods — officially rated around 425 horsepower, though most in the know figured the real number was closer to 500. Names like “Dyno Don” Nicholson turned these factory Comets into some of the most feared cars at the strip, and their altered wheelbases and flip-top bodywork essentially invented what everyone now calls the Funny Car. For a midsize compact nobody expected to matter on a drag strip, that’s about as legendary a resume as it gets.

⚑ Featured Gear

Start Car Conversations →

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

A Strip-Style Comet Carrying the Torch

Genuine factory A/FX Comets are museum pieces now, worth well into six figures whenever one surfaces at auction, so most drag-flavored Comets you’ll actually see on the road today — this one included — are driver-built tributes rather than surviving factory racers. That doesn’t make a car like this any less fun to look at or drive. The sponsor decals and stripped-down stance are paying respect to a genuinely wild chapter of Ford and Mercury drag racing history, channeling the spirit of those 50 factory racers rather than claiming to be one of them, and that’s exactly the kind of homage this hobby was built on.