State of the Cat

A Fond Farewell To Mercury
(Originally published 6.2.10)

Alas, it's here: the official news of the end of Mercury division. After the fourth quarter of 2010 the division will no longer exist.*

*Note: Mercury has been gone from Canada for over a decade now. This post refers to the U.S. Mercury division.

Undoubtedly there are going to be many other blogs and posts on this subject elsewhere on the Web, so this one is going to be short and sweet.

At one point in the semi-distant past (as recent as 1982), Mercury was represented by the Cougar logo. Its mascot was Chauncey the cougar. Mercury became synonymous with the Cougar brand. Mercury WAS Cougar.

Now I have always defended Mercury division as being more upscale from those "lowly" Ford models. But when even I start to see the similarities…that's not a good thing.When the ax fell upon the rear-wheel drive Cougar in 1997, I had feelings that someday we'd also see the end of the division. It's difficult to prop up a model and make it your division's flagship for so many years, then kill the model, and believe you can survive without it.

The fact of the matter is that Mercury never gelled after the Cougar was put to rest. The ill-fated attempt to revive the Cougar name with the front-drive car should have been the wake-up call to everyone that Ford was simply letting Mercury exist. Why that car was never named the Bobcat or Lynx or Capri, I'll never know. Not that it was a bad car…but it didn't deserve the name. That wasn't a kind send-off to the entire Cougar line. (Then again, it was a product of Jacques Nasser).

What was left of Mercury after the FWD Cougar was killed in 2002 was a hodgepodge of different rebadged Ford models with seemingly no real direction. Now I have always defended Mercury division as being more upscale from those "lowly" Ford models. But when even I start to see the similarities…that's not a good thing.

So what happened to Mercury? Having lived through the highs and lows of the recent (roughly four-decade) Mercury saga, here's how I see it:

Today there are simply too many cars and too many divisions. Once Plymouth died ten years ago, then Oldsmobile not long after that, the public should have realized that nothing was sacred as far as brands go. Everything became expendable. Along with the recently-departed Saturn, Pontiac, Saab, and Hummer divisions, so goes Mercury. The market has demanded fewer vehicles and less bloat. Something had to give somewhere.

Even though Ford had always had the perfect number of divisions, it has recently shifted its priorities to the point where Fords were as luxurious as Mercurys, and Lincolns were too far up the scale for Mercury to catch up. It became an orphan through no fault of its own.

Mercury was not given new or updated models lately, so the rest were lost through attrition. No version of the Focus, Mustang, Fiesta. No replacement for the Grand Marquis after 2010. Same for the Mountaineer. The Sable was killed after 2009. One by one, the models were dropped and nothing took their places. For 2010 there were only four models: Milan, Mariner, Mountaineer, Grand Marquis. That left just two models for 2011. Sorry, folks—can't have a division without product.

It has become increasingly clear in the last few years that Ford Motor Company wants its Ford division to be its shining star. So much time, money and effort have gone into some Blue Oval models (Mustang, Fusion, Taurus, Focus, Fiesta) that there was never really any hope for that same time, money and effort going into the Mercury versions—if there were any. I was not a big fan of Alan Mullaly when he was hired to "fix" Ford. It turns out that the guy did one heck of a job saving the company and preventing bankruptcy. While I don't believe he ever intentionally set out to kill off Mercury, I do feel that too much effort has been poured into Ford and Lincoln divisions over the past half a decade. Sure, now is the payoff for all the hard work…but at the expense of a once-great-then-neglected division.

I'd always expected this day, and actually I'm rather surprised that it took this long to happen. I can't feel much remorse because, as a multiple-Cougar owner, my vehicles were the kings of their era. Surprisingly, that also includes my daily-driver '98 Mountaineer. And in the future I'll probably find a good used Mountaineer, or maybe even a Milan, for daily drivers. These vehicles were all great for what they were asked to do, when they were asked to do it. And you can't feel remorse for that. In fact, that's what all car companies should aspire to do.

No, no remorse here. A little sadness, a little nostalgia, but never regret. Mercury carried FoMoCo for a long time. It did its job. It's just too bad that Ford didn't recreate the division and carve out a new niche for it. Would have made a phenomenal hybrid-only division. Or SUV/CUV-only division. Or small car division. But we can play the "what if" game for a long time. For now we must accept the reality.

For at least the next decade or so, we'll still have some great used Mercurys around. If you're loyal to the brand…you ought to think about finding one last one.

The last great Mercurys: we always thought it would be Cougar, Capri, Marauder. Who knew it would be Mountaineer, Milan, Grand Marquis.

Cheers.