Ford Motor Company is continuing to trim the fat and transform itself into a lean, mean fighting machine by offloading its long underperforming Mercury division. The Mercury division has long gotten the leftover table scraps from the mainstream Ford brand. The Milan, Mariner, Mountaineer, and Grand Marquis are all thinly veiled rebadges of the Ford Fusion, Escape, Explorer, and Crown Victoria respectively.
“Mercury originally was created as a premium offering to Ford and was an important source of incremental sales,” said Ford in a press release. “However, the continued strength of the Ford brand – particularly during the past three years – has accelerated the migration from Mercury to Ford for many customers.”
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Ford Motor Company will wind down Mercury production in the coming months and expects to cease all production in the fourth quarter of 2010.With the laggard Mercury brand now out of the way, Ford Motor Company will now “fully devote its financial, product development, production and marketing, sales and service” to the Ford and Lincoln brands.
After most of his kids moved out and got married and started families of their own, my grandfather bought himself a brand-new Mercury every three years. They were unexciting cars, but comfortable and smoooooth rides.
It’s sad to see Mercury go but I never did fully understood the double-branding of Ford and Mercury.
Sure, it was cheap to change a little chrome and call a a “Ford” a “Mercury” but it doubled the marketing costs. And who really cared if their car was a Bobcat instead of a Pinto?
I _think_ the original strategy of Mercury was like the Toyota-Lexus marketing strategy but I’m not convinced that’s a good idea, either. Why not just have a top-end Toyota? Is anyone confused that a Lexus is really just a Toyota?
Car salesman wisdom: “It’s hard to get a redneck out of a Ford.”
Against my better judgement, I bought a new Aerostar in 1985. Three replacement transmissions later (2 after the warranty expired), 1 oil pump ($900 out of warranty), 1 instrument cluster ($1100 but covered by warranty) later, I said ENOUGH.
But lately, with all the talk about Ford being a world class company now, with award winning products that snobby europeans bought in droves, I was thinking of giving them another chance. Then my daughter rented a Focus for a month after an accident… what a piece of crap. SLOW. The A/C didn’t work well enough to keep the cabin cool during the day. (This is in May… forget August.) It sort of felt like you were riding around in something made out of cardboard stuck on top of a skateboard.
Yuck. No thanks.
>> Faxon said, on June 3rd, 2010 at 8:40 am
>> but the UAW loves the redundancy, I guess.
Be sure to ice down your union-bashing intellectual groin after that stretch!
ubiquitous talking head,
I keep hearing about how much better American cars are but I finally went back to American (a Jeep) and the repair bills where KILLER! Seriously, the repair bills on the Jeep where more than my current car cost. (I always buy used with cash — it’s the only way IMHO)
I loved the size, layout and offroad ability of the Cherokee but holy smokes it cost us a ton of money to maintain.
On the other hand, my mother took her Lincoln to something like 225,000K with no major repairs. She’s replaced it with a Toyota and at 125,000K she’s already had a couple of expensive issues.