The 1969 Mercury Cyclone Spoiler II came in two versions. One was the Cale Yarborough red and white cars and the other was the Dan Gurney blue and white paint scheme. Originally the factory in Lorain Ohio built 218 Dan Gurney cars and 285 Cale Yarborough versions. That means there were a total of 503 Spoiler IIs built. There have been other numbers bantered about but these are the numbers the Marti Report folks use based on Ford records they have. Until someone has proof of other numbers this is what we go by.
Obviously, we don’t pretend to believe that we have every Spoiler II still in existence registered and unlike the Talladega we do not have the VINs for all the Spoiler IIs built. If you have any information on all the VINs for Spoilers and Spoiler IIs please contact me at rfleener@comcast.net.
Like we did a few weeks back for the Talladega cars we went to our Registered cars and totaled up how many Spoiler IIs are Registered and what condition each owner their car to be in.
Here are the results.
Cale Yarborough Spoiler IIs
We have 25 cars Registered (one of these was reported to be junked).
We have 6 additional cars found but not Registered and no condition given.
These numbers would suggest that there are 30 Cale Yarborough Spoiler II cars that are or could be on the Road.
2 additional cars were reported to be junked but not Registered.
Cale Yarborough Spoiler IIs by Condition
#1 = 0
#2 = 3
#3 = 7
#4 = 2
#5 = 10
#6 = 0
Junked = 1 (This is in addition to the junked cars not Registered)
We also had reported that 2 of the CY cars is located in New Zealand and 1 located in Fineland.
Dan Gurney Spoiler IIs
We have 25 cars Registered
We have 9 additional cars found but not Registered and no condition given.
These numbers would suggest that there are 34 Dan Gurney Spoiler II cars that are or could be on the Road.
3 cars were reported to be junked but not Registered.
Dan Gurney Spoiler IIs by Condition
#1 = 3
#2 = 4
#3 = 4
#4 = 4
#5 = 8
#6 = 2
We also found that 1 of the DG cars is located in Australia and another in Sweden.
Summary / Conclusion:
I am very surprised about the results. These numbers suggest that there are fewer Cale Yarborugh cars on the planet than Dan Gurney cars even though more of them were built. And, the DG cars that are left are on total in better shape than the CY cars. Why do you think this would be?
If there are a total of 64 Spoiler IIs left in existence that is only a 12.7% survival rate from new. We previously estimated that the Talladega survival rate at approximately 18%. Why the difference?
I don’t want to start any additional rumors about how many Spoiler IIs were actually built and how Ford/Mercury cheated the NASCAR 500 minimum requirements but, isn’t it interesting that if only 350 Spoiler IIs had been built and the survival rate was the same as the Talladega we would expect to have 64 cars in existence today!
