Mercury

Mercury, like the defunct Edsel, was created from scratch, rather than being a takeover of an existing company like Lincoln. Mercury's heyday was in the 1950s, when its formula of stretching and lowering existing Ford platforms was very successful. The marque has changed several times throughout its history. During the 1940s and 1950s, the make moved between as a "gussied up" Ford, to a "junior Lincoln" and even to having its own body designs. During the 1960s and early 1970s, Mercury began to distance itself from Ford and offered several different looking models such as the Cougar and Marquis. But in the late 1970s to the early 1980s the brand was joined at the hip with Ford again and its image suffered as a result.

Mercury sales peaked in 1978 at 580,000 and again in 1993 at over 480,000. Since then, sales have declined by more than half to roughly 200,000 annually. In the mid-1990s the Mercury car brand received some very good free PR when country music star Alan Jackson scored a hit with a cover of K.C. Douglas' "Mercury Blues", a song which heaps complimentary praise on their vehicle range.

Mercury has had a few unique models not shared with domestic Fords, but usually related to other vehicles sold domestically or world wide. These include the Capri convertible (which shared some parts with the Mazda Miata but wasn't nearly as popular, ending production in Australia in 1993), Mercury Tracer (later shared with the Escort, but was a Mexican-built version of the Mazda 323 hatchback in the late 1980s and in '90), Mercury Villager (a name used earlier as a luxury station wagon, but from 1993-2003, it was a minivan shared with Nissan, which sold its version as the Quest and built the drivetrain for both versions), Mercury Cougar (1999-2002, based on the Ford Contour/Mercury Mystique/Ford Mondeo platform but sporting a 2-door, hatchback only bodystyle with sharp styling not shared with the more mundane sedan versions), and the German built Mercury Capri in the '70s (before that model moved to the Ford Fox platform as a twin to Ford Mustang). In 1971, dealers also sold the De Tomaso Pantera exotic sports car, with a Ford V-8.

Mercury (Lincoln-Mercury Division), Ford Motor Company, 1975-1990
Mercury's ride through the seventies and eighties wasn't gentle, but it fared better than some. Mercury continued its historical role of dressing up plainer Ford vehicles and selling them at a higher price, as "near luxury" cars. Of course, this type of car was the bread and butter of the seventies car market. Unfortunately for Mercury, there were just too many "near luxury" cars on the market. Only Mercury's niche products, like the Cougar XR-7 specialty coupe, seemed to find real success with buyers. Of course, much of this might really have had to do with Ford's topsy-turvy financial situation in the seventies. Lincoln-Mercury dealers had plenty of good selling cars, they just weren't the right cars. The Cougar and Lincoln Mk V shattered sales records, but the staples of Mercury's business, the mid-size and full-size sedans and wagons, moved out of showrooms at a snail's pace. The small Bobcat didn't lure economy minded buyers, instead bringing only bad press from its close ties to the ill-fated Ford Pinto. The recession year of 1980 saw Cougar sales fall by more than 50%, and Mercury was really in trouble.

Of course, Ford's product planners were busy reworking Ford and Lincoln's images, trying to prop up those lines, so they couldn't devote much time to Mercury. As a result, Mercury had few unique cars in the eighties, and even less of an identity. The company entered 1975 with a distinct Buick-like character, but left 1990 with no image at all. The lack of a distinct personality showed through in the cars (many are closely related to Fords), although there were some unique twists to Mercurys in the eighties, like the controversial roofline of the '83 Cougar, the light bar and slick looks of the '86 Sable, and the very existence of the Japanese built '88 Tracer.