[blucar]

It could be that you have a 39 Merc frame, or a special order Ford that was fitted with the 239 CID engine. As I recall the '40 DeLux cars had the front sway bar, therefore it is conceivable that it could have been available for special order cars in late '39.

The 39 Merc's had the 239 CID engine which Ford identified as "99". Ford continued to use the 99 number to identify vehicles that had the 239 CID engine.

I ran into this problem in 2015 with a '46 Ford that I had, the state would not honor the serial number on the frame/title because it was 99Axxxxxx. Published documentation, Standard Catalog of American Cars, shows that a '46 Ford V8 serial number should be 69Axxxxxx