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Everyone remembers Ford’s FE big-block. Almost nobody remembers the MEL — a completely different big-block family built for Lincolns and Continentals that occasionally turned up somewhere nobody expected, from a Miami-to-Nassau boat race to an NHRA Nationals win. Read on to find out how a luxury-car engine ended up in the record books.
In 1958 Ford launched three entirely new V8 engine families in a single year, named after the divisions they were built to serve: MEL for Mercury-Edsel-Lincoln, FE for Ford-Edsel, and FT for Ford-Truck. They shared oiling systems and bolt patterns but arranged their valves in opposite order, a detail that tells you almost everything about how they were designed. Read on for part one of three, covering how these engines were built and why they lasted until 1976.
The 1959-1961 Ford Thunderbird packed in more genuine history than its three model years suggest: an ad campaign that doubled sales, two cars built entirely of stainless steel, and a 1961 Indy 500 pace-car lap marking the race’s Golden Anniversary. Read on for the engine options, rare packages, and one-of-a-kind builds that defined this generation.