[rotorwrench]

The shoe box Ford cars had more bump steer that the Mercury cars. The one improvement Ford could have done on the Mercury was the angle and length of the steering arm on the spindles. The rest of the geometry is pretty close. They changed those arms in 1952 for both the Ford and Mercury since they were on the same basic design. In 52 & 53, the rest of it was pretty similar to the older shoe box design but different dimensions for the wider body.

The Mercury drag link and tie rods have been up and down in availability over the years so modern stuff with simple replaceable ends through out couldn't hurt anything. The old screw bearing A-arm suspension bushing design lasted pretty well but ball joints with non-king pin spindles takes less tooling to work on for sure.