What is mercurius tensor tubing? Anyone ever hear of this?

I don’t know offhand, but its dimpled, and I’d assume it’s steel. Have pictures of the rest of the tubes?

I'm not surprised this has come up, considering Mercury is in retrograde.

According to the fine print it's just a high tensile steel. (acciaio alta resistenza).

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we still have me mum's Tensor high intensity lamp from the nineteen sixties -


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It's the preferred tubing for use in building the Hogwart's team bikes ....

Interesting seat lug. Double lugged?

It's what's known as marketing fluff.

I drove a Mercury Retrograde once. Ran rings around my Saturn.

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i'll wager it could have taken you all the way to another Galaxie,,,provided of course you were able to avoid hitting a Meteor


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For that you'd need a Comet.

Only if it’s boosted by a Rocket 88…

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yes indeed!

either that or a Starfire...

and if one needed a bit of a break on their way to that next Galaxie they could always stop off for a rest at a Starlet


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Didn't someone make "Vector" tubing once?

Sure is kinda pretty, though

Looks awfully nice for hi-ten (very clean metalwork, cromovelato, etc).

I'm just going by what the decal actually says. Also, notice that there's no mention of an alloy or butting (rinforzati). The marketing department normally wouldn't miss the opportunity to expound these attributes, so their absence implies a lower level tubeset.

By the late 1980s their were some quite nice frames being produced with less than stellar tubesets, such as Oria 0.9TT, which was a plain gauge tubeset with quite thick 0.9mm walls. You can find lots of examples from quite prestigious marques, with features such as brazed-on front derailleur hangers, investment cast fittings and lots of chrome.

Cromovelato is not exclusively the domain of high end bicycles. When I was wrenching at the LBS in the early 1970s, the entry level Chiorda and Torpado used cromovelato finishes.

Similarly, fluted tubing can also be found on entry level bicycles. Some early examples can be found on entry level Japanese bicycles from the early 1970s.

So, while the frame's attributes may appear inconsistent the level of tubing, there are precedents. I wouldn't rule it out, However, I also wouldn't rule out the decal not being OEM to the frame, though if it was a replacement, I would think they would use a more recognizable tubeset. Regardless, my original statement was made based on face value of the tubing decal itself, which is what the OP was inquiring about.

There was a Vector supercar.

We rode around in a Mercury Meteor wagon in the late sixties. The third bench seat faced backward.

^^^^ A lot of late '60s American station wagons had a rear facing third seat, since you hopped in from the back. Some Fords (including that Meteor, probably) actually had a back gate that opened like a door and dropped down like a tailgate.

We had a Ford like that. Don't recall the model. I'm not sure that kind of set up would pass modern safety standards.

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and all of us of a certain age can recall the telly adverts with coach Ara Parseghian demonstrating Ford's 3-way option tail gate

"hand off, pass or keep"


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I’ve never heard of it, but in my opinion squashing the tubes like that would weaken them. Nothing is stronger than good quality round tubing. To be honest though, all steel has similar characteristics all dimensions being the same. You could make a frame from straight gauge high tensile steel, and straight gauge 531, or stainless and they’d all have “similar” ride characteristics if the thicknesses of the tube walls etc were all basically the same.

This will all end up in a Nova!

And that's not going anywhere....