Editor’s Note: Hopewell Cruise Night has been rescheduled for June 3 due to inclement weather.
For more than 30 years, Alfred Consoli’s 1956 Mercury Montclair hardtop sat idle in the garage of his Hopewell home. The 60-year-old sedan with chrome lightning-bolt trim has become an enviable classic car, but that’s not the reason he’s held on to it for so long. He’s keeping a promise he made 50 years ago. And after a lengthy restoration, the final touches are being made just in time for Hopewell Cruise Night on Friday, June 3.
“I thought it was a beautiful car,” Alfred said, remembering the first time he saw the Mercury when he was eight years old. “It was the nicest looking car in the neighborhood.”
Alfred stands in the driveway of his Van Dyke Road home holding up a board of carpet tiles to the car’s glossy cyan-blue exterior. Although it’s not the original paint, he had the hue custom mixed to recreate the exact factory color. He also installed a new motor and metal work that involved a five-year restoration in a Virginia shop. The carpeting is the last step in the 12-year restoration process.
Ernest Consoli, Alfred’s father, purchased the car used after the previous owner traded it in with only 8,000 miles on the odometer. Alfred has many childhood memories of trips to Newark to visit relatives, Sunday drives along the Delaware River and cruising around Trenton with his dad and brother.
Born in Rome, Ernest came to the United States in 1927 at the age of 14. World War I was still fresh in his mother’s mind, and Ernest made his way across the country to Reading, Pennsylvania where his brothers had already immigrated.
A Hopewell resident introduced him to her goddaughter, and the two soon married and started a family in the Sourland Mountains. He manufactured cinderblocks, and eventually he and his eldest son Victor started Ernest Consoli and Sons, an excavating business that Victor and Alfred still operate to this day on Hopewell-Wertsville Road.
Ernest took impeccable care of the car. Alfred recalls his father never driving it in bad weather, even on days with light rain.
Originally, Ernest planned to give the car to Victor. But after he and his friends put too many miles on it during prom night, the offer was rescinded. At the time, Alfred had his eye on other makes and models, and Ernest had planned to purchase Alfred a car as a high school graduation present. He never had the chance.
In 1966, when Alfred was 17, Ernest died from a sudden illness. On his deathbed, he told Alfred that if he waxed the Mercury, it was his.
Alfred drove the car during his senior year at Hopewell Valley Central High School, and his first dates with classmate Mary Ann Mamo were in the car. The two have been married for more than 40 years.
“It didn’t have seat belts,” Mary Ann recalls, “and when we dated, I’d sit real close to him and when he’d turn the car, I would slide to the right and back to the left when he straightened out.”
Alfred points to the spot in the passenger side floor where Mary Ann’s heels dug a hole into the carpeting. They reminisced about going to get pizza and ice cream in Trenton, driving to Hillbilly Hall to meet up with friends and piling as many people into the car before heading to the drive-in movie theater. They managed to sneak in a few extra people in the trunk.
“I was in the trunk,” Mary Ann said, laughing. “You would have to pay per person, and we didn’t have a lot of money.”
“We’d put the smaller people in the trunk, the bigger people stayed in the front seat,” Alfred explained.
As time went on, Alfred and Mary Ann purchased new cars and started a family. The Mercury was relegated to the garage, but Alfred never considered getting rid of it. “I never realized it would be a classic back then. You just didn’t think like that but luckily I just kept it and kept it,” he said.
“I used it as a shed,” Mary Ann said. “All the things that didn’t fit in the garage, I’d put in the trunk.”
She fit three sets of skis in the trunk and stored odds and ends on the seats. In the decades the car occupied the garage unused, it never caused any friction in the marriage.
“I’m not a car person, but to me that is what he treasured,” she said. “You’re not married for 44 years for nothing. You have to compromise.”
Their son Scott remembers the car as a storage space for coats and baseball bats growing up. “It was a big closet in the middle of the garage,” he said.
Before restoring the Mercury, Alfred and Scott, 37, teamed up to restore a 1953 red Ford F-100 pickup truck. Alfred says he has been fixing up cars since he was 14 years old, and always enjoyed the challenge.
“Cars were simple back then,” Alfred explained. “If you had gas and you had spark, which is ignition, the car would run. That’s all there is to it.”
As a teen, he and his friends would purchase run-down cars to fix up and sell or scrap for parts. When Mary Ann turned 17, he gave her a Triumph TR4, a British sports car.
“I was always mechanically inclined,” Alfred said. “As soon as I had something, no matter what it was, I had to find out how it worked. Our son is the same way.”
In a separate interview, Scott told the story of the time he took apart the family’s VCR as a kid. Instead of getting scolded, his parents just told him to put it back together. A landscape architect currently residing in Lambertville, he said, “It really helped develop who I am.”
The Ford F-100 required a full, ground up restoration with every nut and bolt taken out. It took 14 years. After it was complete they put custom license plates on the truck: “NVRAGN,” for never again.
“We learned a lot of lessons and it was a lot of work,” Scott said, but in end it wasn’t the outcome that made the process worth the effort. It was the all the time he got to spend with his dad.
After Scott’s truck was completed, Alfred turned his attention back to the Mercury. He said it was always his plan to restore the car at some point, but with raising three children, building the family’s home, and putting them all through college, the car was not a priority.
“I got to the point where I saved a few dollars and could spend the money to fix the car,” he said.
After getting the car running and back in drivable condition, Alfred decided to have the Mercury fully restored, which required a new motor and metal work.
“It’s a beautiful car, but there’s not that many of them left,” he said. Parts were hard to find, and a lot of the metal work needed to be hand made. The car spent five years in a restoration shop in Virginia.
“I wanted something that would sound good and run fast,” he said. “I wanted it top notch, pristine—show quality, which it is.”
Since getting his car restored, Alfred has taken it to numerous car shows in the Mercer County area and, Mary Ann says he’s won many trophies in the shows.
Alfred brushes off the rewards. “Dust collectors,” he calls them. “I just enjoy driving it.”
The Consolis have made the bi-annual Hopewell Cruise Night a family event. Alfred brings his Mercury, Scott brings his Ford and his sisters, Andrea Hanley and Jennifer Branagh of Pennington, bring their kids, the Consolis six grandchildren.
“I can tell my dad is ecstatic to drive the car and show it off and tell stories,” Scott said. He added that it’s a fun event and good for the community.
“There’s a lot of beautiful cars there every year,” Alfred said. “Some of them are really outstanding.”
Mary Ann plans to go early to grab a table at the Hopewell Inn to chat with neighbors and friends as they pass by. Alfred will have the hood up on his mercury so attendees can see the 427 Ford Cobra motor.
“This was my life-long ambition,” Alfred said. “I always thought that was my father’s car, he gave it to me on his deathbed, and I’m going to follow through.”
“There’s a lot of sentimental value there,” Scott said. “I’m proud of my dad. He’s one of the smartest, brightest guys that I know.”
This spring’s Hopewell Cruise Night was rescheduled for Friday, June 3 at 4 p.m. on Broad Street. The public event is free and Broad Street parking is reserved for show cars on a first come, first serve basis.
,
Alfred Consoli stands with his 1956 Mercury Montclair.,
