Edmunds Inside Line hears from mysterious "supplier sources" that the Blue Oval won't build new Mercurys after 2012. Why on earth would Ford kill a beloved brand with such a rich heritage? Maybe because Mercury sales are set to drop below Lincoln's for the first time since 1938. The Fusion-based Milan should be the last of its current models manning the ramparts, once the Montego and Grand Marquis hit the dust sometime in 2011 or early 2012. Looking down the road, the Mercury cup hardly runneth over, without even a version of Lincoln's Flexible MKT crossover or the 2010 Ford Taurus. Edmunds rests its case with this quote from Ford Presidente del Americas, Mark Fields: "We've laid out a strategy to focus a lot of our efforts going forward on the Lincoln side of the franchise. That's where a majority of our focus is going to be, and Lincoln will become the dominant portion of the Lincoln-Mercury franchise, which is a flip from the history." But if that sounds too grim, note that Fields told Automotive News [sub] that "[Mercury] is an important part of the stable of brands." In fact, FoMoCo would continue to invest in the nameplate. Is this a sign of internal divisions over Mercury's fate? All things being equal, it's probably just a ruse to generate faith in the brand, while it's being taken out back to be shot.
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Toyota – Lexus
Nissan – Infiniti
Honda – Acura
Chevrolet – Cadillac
Ford – Lincoln
It kind of makes sense, eh?
Is that photo a Mercury Eliminator or Mercury Eliminated?
How can I put this?
Mark Fields talks bollocks!
This guy barely says anything of substance and this is no exception. Will they? Won’t they? Who frigging cares?
Mercury should have been their brand for Euro Fords; cars just above NA Fords, but not fully luxury like, Lincoln. Almost like a “Buick” for Ford.
That way they can get away with charging a premium for the Euro Fords whilst using the Mercury brand to study trends in the NA market, like “What Euro ideas are the NA market liking at the moment?”
It isn’t difficult.
KatiePuckrik: “It isn’t difficult.”
Yes, it is. Or more accurately, it isn’t as easy as that. Ford tried the Euro-Ford route with the Merkur brand in the ’80’s. It didn’t work.
Saturn is tring the Euro-Opel route Today. It isn’t working.
You heard it here first: the blueprints for Mondeos and Galaxys (not Galaxies) are headed to Mexico. Come 2012, Mercury will be reborn as the low volume, premium Ford brand that made a splash back in 1939: slightly better engines, better interiors, the complete package.
Edsel would be proud.
Steve-O
That doesn’t mean it CAN’T work. Nowadays, the North American market is more open to Euro styling and foreign influences.
I’m sure that once people see the Ford Mondeo, the C-Max & S-Max crossovers and the Ford Focus Cabriolet, they’ll think twice about a Mercury.
Toyota and Honda tried selling their cars in North America and failed. Doesn’t mean it was a bad idea. It was just execution was bad (same with GM and Opel).
Mercury Blues…
David Lindley, where are you?
Ford has tried, several times, bringing it’s Euro offerings as Mercurys (or selling them next to Mercury). Failed everytime…maybe the market was wrong, but no one bought into it. It was open to the same styling and influences in the 80s and 90s as well.
Merkur models
Capri
Cougar
Mystique
Mercury was justified in the 40s and 50s as a slightly premium Ford because there wasn’t as many offerings as there is now. And Lincolns were truly luxury cars with few external parts shared with a more plebian offering from FoMoCo.
Better to kill off the brand and focus on Ford and Lincoln. Mercury was/is/always will be merely a trim of Ford models, except for the Capri and last Cougar there was no exclusive Mercury offering. They aren’t bad at all, but just not enough to justify over a Ford model.
Also, you can’t immediately change people’s perception just by new products. See Saturn as an example. Many will still think of Mercury as a staid rental, 1970s country club car, or Florida retirees choice drive. They won’t tell people “well, yes I drive a Mercury…but wait, it’s a new kind, it’s a Euro Ford”.
Still a Mercury in many people’s view. Better to drop the brand and move on, no sense in trying to keep it around for nostalgia or “American brand pride”.
Katie:
Absolutely, any scenario that brings excellent products to this market works for me…
Unfortunately with past history as a teacher, I’m skeptical. As much as I loved the Sierras (Merkur XR4Ti) and Merkur Scorpio, the US market did not embrace them. So the smaller, sportier, nimbler fare from Ford-Europe with an old, mismanaged American woodgrain-crusted nameplate like Mercury may simply be another “great landing, wrong airport” kind of exercise.
It’s no secret Mulally wants to phase out Mercury and who can blame him?
It’s an utterly worthless brand whose heyday is decades behind it. Mercury has absolutely zero brand equity or value left. Like Oldsmobile nobody will honestly miss it when it’s gone and it will be one less thing diverting Ford’s resources and attention from it’s core business which is the Ford brand itself.
Back when it was only US manufacturers brands like Mercury made sense and had their place. That time is long gone. Today there are foreign manfacturers that own over half the market and have supplanted brands like Mercury.
The sooner Ford (and GM) can put brands like this behind them the better off they will be in a new reality where they have very little share of the overall market.
Ford needs to dump Mercury, Lincoln and all of their badge engineered appliances, and position where Lincoln should have stayed…and genuine luxury brand…not this lets take a Taurus, put a Lincoln sticker on it, and charge 50K for it nonsense.
^^^^^”position Volvo where Lincoln should have stayed”
Forgot the “Volvo”.
If I am not mistaken, the “New Mercury Cougar” was the best selling sports compact car the year it came out in 1999. In 2000-2001 it was supposed to recieve the SVT tuned duratec 2.5 for use in the Cougar S but that never happened. Had Mercury updated the Cougar to stay competetive with the Celica, Eclipse, RSX etc. instead of neglecting it, Mercury might have been able to continue its initial success.
However, i would argue that the initial success of the Cougar shows that Katie Puckrik’s argument has a factual basis.
Interestingly enough, the only reason Lincoln has out-sold Mercury since 1938, was because (natch) there WAS no Mercury until 1939… Nice one.
As the unofficial automotive historian around here, isn’t it time we looked at Mercury in the grand scheme of things over the past 70 years?
Post-war Canada saw the greatest proliferation of Mercury cars, sold by Lincoln-Mercury dealers as well as by Ford dealers (as Monarch branded cars). Likewise, L-M dealers got to sell Mercury trucks and Meteor branded cars (Fords with special grillwork and badges).
In fact, the Ford and Mercury bodies, wheelbases and engine displacements WERE subtly different in all categories. Alas, there never was a Meteor version of the Thunderbird for Canada only (but that would have been one rare critter had there been). In fact, there were no 2-seat T-birds built outside of the US but I digress…
Fast-forward to the fall of 1957 when Ford introduced the Edsel. Meteor went away in Canada, replaced by the Edsels (I think even at the start in Canada, the dealers were M-E-L; Mercury-Edsel-Lincoln). The handwriting had to be on the wall for Edsel, when in the fall of 1958, the ever-popular Meteor line returned at the Mercury dealers (and was once again a dressed up Ford).
Mercury dealers in Canada even got to sell a dressed up Ford Falcon called – simply – Frontenac, in the fall of 1959 for 1960. It was a one-year wonder, replaced by the Mercury Comet. Meteor cars continued for a few years more in Canada as before (full sized Ford cars dressed up) but by 1962, a Meteor sold at a Mercury dealer in the USA was an entirely unrelated car loosely based on a stretched Fairlane, just as the Comet was based on a stretched Falcon.
Backpedalling a tad, the 1958 Edsel was sold in two sizes; the smaller Ranger and Pacer (sharing base-bodies with the larger of two full-sized Ford lines), and the bigger Edsel shared it’s chassis and much of the underbody with the entirely different Mercury. In 1959, only the Ford based Edsel cars survived, so between 1959 and 1964, the Mercury full sized automobile was an entirely separate and unique vehicle, only sharing the occasional components with Fords.
As mentioned, the Cougar was an up-sized and upgraded Mustang, which came out in the fall of 1966 as a 1967 car (wheras the Mustang came out in April 1964).
So Mercury DID have a unique place in American and especially Canadian automotive history until the early-mid 1970’s when it pretty much simply became a cloned upgraded Ford with occasionally specific sheetmetal here and there.
In the United States, Mercury never did help Ford customers move on to Lincoln in steps, to the same extent that Pontiac, Oldsmobile and Buick seemed to do for GM. In fact, that was the entire reasoning behind the Edsel – to add a stepping stone.
In 1956 when the Edsel was initially planned, even lowly and crummy Chrysler, coming back from yet another near-death experience in 1954, had Plymouth, Dodge, DeSoto, Chrysler and Imperial brands. Ford had Ford, Mercury and Lincoln, then added Continental (brand) above Lincoln in 1956-1957 (and sucked it back into Lincoln in 1958; it failed to flourish).
My own father worked at Mercury in Wayne Michigan from 1953 through 1958 and during late 1957-early 1958, he actually also worked on senior Edsels, since the Wayne plant was the sole facility building big Edsels (as it had been a dedicated Mercury-only plant and the senior Edsel shared the underbody and frame).
EM – the Montego has already bit the dust.
Ford needs to dump Mercury and concentrate on better equipping Lincoln to fight off the Cadillac surge of new products. I agree, the Cougar was a helluva car when it was first introduced in the late 90s but due to Ford’s usual neglect of the Cougar, and Mercury as a whole, the brand has become nothing more than a trim level. I’m sorry but Mullaly needs to stop beating around the bush and just axe Mercury as a whole.
Ford already has a brand for small, sporty, European-style vehicles with nicer interiors and sharp handling. A division that, month-over-month, has increased volume versus prior years. That brand?
Mazda.
Seriously, all this “make Mercury an outlet for European Fords” ignores the fact that Mazda already does just that, does it well, and isn’t a damaged brand. Trying to resurrect Mercury in Mazda’s role will just wound both.
About the only think I can fault Mazda’s product planning for is the upcoming 6: unless they’re going to pull a rabbit out of their hat, making the NADM 6 a larger car than the Atenza/Euro-6 is exactly the kind of Toyota-chasing mistake that nearly killed them in the 1990s.
An article about Mercury without a picture of Jill Wagner? Where’s the fun in that?
Seriously…but the better looking cougar up there.
even if they brought over euro-fords no one is going to buy them. or i should say, young people. Mercury is for the geriatric generation and most of the young crowd wont be caught dead in one unless their grandmother is driving.
just kill it. give it a quick death and be done with it. as its going away present i say Jill Wagner takes off an article of clothing for ever 5k vehicles sold!
Killing Mercury doesn’t make any sense (so they’ll probably do it, now that I think about it). Mercury is profitable for Ford. It doesn’t take much skill to slap more chrome on a Ford and charge a grand more for it. In any case, if you kill Mercury, Lincoln will die as well. Sales at every Lincoln-Mercury dealer will instantly drop by 50%. So, a large number of those dealers will fold. So, Lincoln’s sales will drop to the point it will have to be killed as well.
Geoptf,
So, what if Ford just put the resources devoted to Mercury’s marketing and product development, made nicer Fords and sold them at Lincoln dealers, instead of Mercurys?
Yes, franchise laws make this tough and, yes, it’d result in dealer attrition, but isn’t that the point?
psarhjinian, I believe that is Mulally’s plan.
Remember back in Ford’s heyday the Ford product line had upscale sedans like the Fairlane (which lived on in Australia as a near-luxury fullsize car until a few years ago).
There’s no need to waste the resources or effort on a completely different brand for that purpose. But it doesn’t help Ford’s too-many-dealers problem to just give Ford franchises to every Lincoln dealer out there.
We’ll see.
There is nothing wrong with bring the best of European Ford into the USA, but there is no need to call them a Mercury. The Ford name works fine on those vehicles in Europe, and “Ford” has much greater mindshare in the US than “Mercury” does. In today’s saturated market the first hurdle is getting people to even thing about your brand, so why put a great product under a has-been brand when you have a stronger one available?
psarhjinian :
June 10th, 2008 at 5:57 pm
Geoptf,
So, what if Ford just put the resources devoted to Mercury’s marketing and product development, made nicer Fords and sold them at Lincoln dealers, instead of Mercurys?
Yes, franchise laws make this tough and, yes, it’d result in dealer attrition, but isn’t that the point?
The problem is is that it won’t be organized dealer attrition. Good dealer attrition would be if there’s too many dealers in one city, and some of them close. Bad dealer attrition would be if the only Mercury-Lincoln dealer within 100 miles closes. If you eliminate Mercury, both will happen. Sales for Lincoln will collapse to the point that it too would have to close.
Basically, the choices are to close both Mercury and Lincoln, or keep them both. You can’t do it halfway.
Same goes for Buick-Pontiac-GMC. You either keep them all, or you kill them all.
As for turning Lincoln-Mercury dealers into Ford-Lincoln dealers, the existing Ford dealer down the street would be mighty pissed (and would sue and win-most have geographic exclusivity contracts). Plus, as TriShield said, there’s already too many Ford dealers.
What about a special Mercury trim level for Lincoln? Kind of like what Radcliffe turned into for Harvard after the college was closed.
It makes sense in that’s indicative of the dire straits the American auto industry is in. Mercury wasn’t formed until 1938, many years after the Ford Motor Company was a success and the Lincoln division was started in 1922.
Simply put, Ford, like Chrysler and GM, are stripping down to their original bare essentials in a desperate effort to survive.
I wonder if the 80s effort to sell Euro Fords Stateside would have worked better if they had not tried to create the Merkur brand. Merkur was always a half-hearted effort that probably confused more buyers than it enticed, and that didn’t seem to arouse any particular dealer enthusiasm. On the other hand, the Taurus was a much better fit for contemporary middle-American tastes, and if L-M dealers had been told to sell the Scorpio as a Mercury instead of getting the Sable, I’m sure they would have screamed bloody murder.
Ford dropped Mercury here in Canada after the 1999 model year and it took me a while to realize it: “Hey where are the redesigned 2000 Sables?!”
Up until about a year ago i thought all the kill Mercury talk was poppycock. Now i not only think it’s a just idea, but it’s probably necessary for Ford’s longer-term health.
Oh well.
Mercury has always been large sedans and coupes aimed at conservative, middle and upper middle class white collar men.
Without a full sized RWD sedan, Mercury is dead. The interesting thing is Mercury is dying faster than the Grand Marquis, which is the way it should be.
Cougar, Mystique and Contour were not Euro-Fords. They were designed in a collaborative process with Euro-Ford and at the same time as the first generation Mondeo. but, they were not Mondeos. Ford-NA insisted in doing things its own way. Largely, I think because they were afraid of cannibalizing Taurus sales.
The Contour/Mystique was intended to replace the Tempest/Topaz PoSes. Unfortunately It was too nice a car to replace the utter garbage. They keept making it cheaper to deal with the reality of the price point they had fixed. I owned both a 99 and a 95 Mystique, and the 95 was much nicer.
The cars were, for daily drivers, fun to drive. At 2800 lbs with the 2.5l duratech making 165 hp they were lively. The biggest problem, other than reliability, was that there was very little room in the back seat.
What is it about Detroit and back seats. My Accords have nice back seats. My friends A8 is absolutely cavernous. But I never had an American car (even my Father’s 1972 Eldorado) that had decent room in the back seat.
Interesting debate. I think that I’m inclined to agree with this –
Steve-O : As much as I loved the Sierras (Merkur XR4Ti) and Merkur Scorpio, the US market did not embrace them. So the smaller, sportier, nimbler fare from Ford-Europe with an old, mismanaged American woodgrain-crusted nameplate like Mercury may simply be another “great landing, wrong airport” kind of exercise.
I liked the Sierra. The Brits didn’t think much of it. I liked it so much, I even wrote a nostalgia piece about it here.
https://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/land-of-hope-and-glory/
But the XR4ti wasn’t a Sierra. It was an oddball that had nothing in common with the other cars being sold next to it or the stodgy dealers charged with selling it who didn’t understand it, saddled with a 2.3 liter turbo that established new records for lag.
There was no way that this could compete with BMW. It was set up to lose. If Ford wanted to sell these, it needed an entirely new brand with standalone dealerships and an entirely different identity, and they needed to give it a set of engines that didn’t make driving it a chore. They have since tried to correct this mistake by buying Volvo.
mercury tried to bring this , Mercury tried to bring that… but failed. They would sooner carry a foreign built car from Cuiper`s belt than engineer cars themselves. Has actually mercury tried to build their own models, not rebadge mothership throw-ups? So here is the simplest answer in Universe- if you want to have a brand, it actually need its own , guess what…CARS! So if you are a Mercury brand would it be really strange if it had ,like, Mercury cars? |And not a Ford Crown Victoria make -up diva on life support by heart pacer being kicked in by a new chrome grille every 2 years. remember mercury Messenger, like, unique sheetmetal, veering away from Ford and stuff. I believe santa Claus ( and adverbial clause)more than the blue oval primaries.
Mercury never had much of a heydey. It was never nearly as strong as Buick and Olds were back in the day, because there was hardly ever much differentiation from Ford.
The only reason it has lasted this long is to give Lincoln dealers sufficient volume. With Lincolns sharing more with Fords, there’s no longer room for Mercury.
@ RGS920 “If I am not mistaken, the “New Mercury Cougar” was the best selling sports compact car the year it came out in 1999. In 2000-2001 it was supposed to recieve the SVT tuned duratec 2.5 for use in the Cougar S but that never happened. Had Mercury updated the Cougar to stay competetive with the Celica, Eclipse, RSX etc. instead of neglecting it, Mercury might have been able to continue its initial success.”
I have had several friends who’ve owned the FWD Cougar and it was a nightmare. Blown headgaskets, blown trannies every 20k-30k miles, a/c always going out (either relays or compressor or leaks). It was also slow and had terrible understeer. It sure did look quick sitting still until you drove it and base 4 cylinder RSX, Integra easily leaving it behind for the owner to wallow in misery (if the car didn’t break). Terrible in quality and reliabiliy (that car really needed and extra 1-2 years of development as it had a lot of problems).
Everybody is still missing my point. The question here isn’t, “Should Ford close down Mercury?” The question here is, “Should Ford close down Lincoln-Mercury?” Ford can’t afford to have Lincoln die, so Mercury stays.
Doesn’t matter one bit that Mercuries are all rebadged Fords. In fact, that’s a good thing, because that makes them cheaper to design.
As for bringing over European Fords as Mercuries, that’s a complete non-starter. Due to the weak dollar, they would cost too much and Ford would lose a bundle on each one sold. Look at the Saturn Astra for an example as what would happen.
Michael Karesh : Mercury never had much of a heydey. It was never nearly as strong as Buick and Olds were back in the day, because there was hardly ever much differentiation from Ford.
I might debate that: check the sales and market share gain of the 1986-88 Sable over Olds/Buick/Pontiac/Chrysler. Eric Taub or Maryann Keller mentioned it in one of their books about 1980s Detroit.
Lincoln-Mercury was flying high back then, and the Sable didn’t look much like the Taurus at all.
Alternate title for this blog:
“Eliminator? I just met her!”
“the Sable didn’t look much like the Taurus at all.”
No, it was much uglier.
I rode in a Mercury yesterday for the first time in years. Of course, it was a Grand Marquis taxi.
Mercury barely exists in Canada (my part anyway), so I say good riddance.
@Sajeev: Of course L-M did well in the late 80s and into the 90s. The Town Car and Grand Marquis sold well, as did the Mark VII. The Sable (LASER LIGHT BAR!!) and Cougar did well too, there was a market for them and limited competitors.
The only competition was from within the US makers, and that wasn’t much. BMW and Mercedes were the only import luxury brands with Acura and Lexus merely rebadged Accords and Camrys.
@Geotpf: I understand your point, but disagree very much. You have to think outside the box of keeping Lincoln and Mercury together. Lincoln only or Lincoln-Ford dealers can exist. A Lincoln only dealer can be smaller, that’s fine…works with other low and mid-volume brands.
Lithia, one of the largest dealers in the nation, has F-M-L. Wouldn’t hurt them to lose the low sales of Mercury at all, actually be easier to sell only two versions of a platform and not three.
Here in Harrisburg there were two standalone Lincoln-Mercury dealers, both owned by the same dealer group.
Three weeks ago, it was announced that both locations would be closed, and the franchise given to a local Ford dealer. So there is now one Lincoln-Mercury dealer, and it is part of a Ford dealer.
Mercury shares a problem with the other old-line American medium-price brands – Buick, Chrysler, Pontiac, Oldsmobile and Mercury – namely, that its reason to exist no longer exists.
Decades of badge-engineering and model-swapping have eliminated the distinctions between the low-price brands (Ford, Chevrolet and Plymouth) and their upmarket siblings. Thus, most people no longer view Mercury as a step up from Ford, or a Pontiac as a step up from Chevrolet. Foreign nameplates, meanwhile, are offering buyers a real choice. If you want to “move up” from a Ford or a Chevrolet, you buy a low-level Lexus, Acura or Infiniti.
People can argue that Ford and GM can’t afford to drop a brand for various reasons, but judging by the continually declining sales figures for these brands, the customers are making that decision for them. Sooner or later, sales of these brands will drop to the point that they are no longer viable, regardless of how many dealers or fans clamor for their existence.
TEXN3 :
June 11th, 2008 at 1:29 pm
I understand your point, but disagree very much. You have to think outside the box of keeping Lincoln and Mercury together. Lincoln only or Lincoln-Ford dealers can exist. A Lincoln only dealer can be smaller, that’s fine…works with other low and mid-volume brands.
But the Lincoln-Mercury dealer has a large dealer’s expenses. His lot is bigger than a smaller dealer’s, so his lease or mortage, plus things like taxes and utilties, are going to be much larger than a smaller dealer’s. That is, his expenses are based around selling X number of cars each year. If he’s suddenly selling .5 X number of cars, he’ll go out of business. If enough Mercury-Lincoln dealers go out of business, Lincoln goes out of business.
Same theory with the whole “GM (or Ford or Chrysler) must shrink to survive” meme. There has never been a case where a large, failing business has become a small, profitable company. It simply doesn’t happen.
He can move his business too…there are plenty of small dealer lots that are sitting empty…especially in places like Houston. There are seldom dealer owners that have just one large lot and not others, or just have one franchise.
Or Ford dealers buyout the Lincoln franchise and move them into their stores.
Mercury is an utterly useless (and needlessly redundant) product line. The only vaguely interesting model is the Milan which is more tasteful (to my eyes) than the lower-level models of the Fusion. The Fusion with the Sport Appearance Package solves that problem, however.
I have several friends who work for a huge corporation that issues Ford/Mercury vehicles as their company cars. They actually get to choose which vehicle they want and all of them AVOID Mercury. To folks my age (33) and under, it’s almost embarrassing to drive one. The same applies to Buick (emphasis on the “ick”).
My best friend has had a few Mercurys in the past which we quickly renamed to reflect our disdain for them.
Mercury Mystique- appropriately renamed “Mercury Mistake”
Mercury Sable- “Mercury diSABLE” (the previous-gen Taurus was a better choice- and that’s sad)