Glass Top

The Ford Motor Co. showed off its 1954 Mercury this week and gave the rest of the medium-priced field something to shoot at: a sleek new hardtop model named the Sun Valley. The top over the front seat is made of clear plastic, tinted to lessen the sun's glare; the back half is steel. Mercury first tried out its new top on a pair of experimental cars, found that the public liked it well enough for mass production. Factory list price on the Sun Valley (with such standard accessories as heater, radio, directional signals, etc.): $2,706, or $361 more than the cheapest Mercury two-door sedan.

Mercury's seven other models also got their full share of improvements. Like the new Lincoln, which came out a week ago, Mercury is priced the same and looks much the same as last year's cars on the outside. The big changes are inside. Among them: new front shock absorbers and springs, an improved automatic (Merc-O-Matic) transmission, an easy-steering front-end suspension with a ball & socket joint replacing the old-fashioned kingpin assembly. But the biggest improvement is the engine. Instead of last year's 125 h.p. V8, the new Mercury has a completely redesigned V8, turning up 161 h.p., that engineers have been working on for five years and have tested for thousands of hours. It includes such features as overhead valves, a four-barrel carburetor, and a compression ratio boosted from 7.2-1 to 7.5-1. The car's performance: 16 to 20 miles to the gal lon and a top speed of more than 100 m.p.h.

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