(No Longer) Crazy 'Bout A Mercury...

Ford to drop Mercury line at year's end

Ford Motor Co. announced Wednesday that it would drop its 72-year-old Mercury brand, the latest example of an American auto giant shedding one of its divisions in an increasingly competitive marketplace.

The last set of Mercury cars is expected to roll off the line in the fourth quarter of this year. Spokesmen from the company said that though the decision was a difficult one, it was the only one the company could make from a financial standpoint. The Mercury brand's line includes the Milan and Grand Marquis cars and the Mariner and Mountaineer sport utility vehicles.

Anyone who hasn't seen the writing on the wall on this maneuver hasn't been paying attention for, oh, the last decade or so. We've seen GM (finally) shedding brands left and right. Chrysler finally dropped the Plymouth brand from their lineup. It's time Ford wised up and lost the Mercury marque - it's been nothing but warmed-over Fords for nearly 50 years as it is. The days of offering two, three, or even four identical cars with the same sheetmetal, powerplant, and interior but with different badges and paint schemes are over, a relic of a different, past time.

People used to be fiercely loyal to their particular brand - not just the manufacturer, which is even falling by the wayside these days. Folks were indoctrinated early into the cult of Chevrolet, or the family of Ford; suggesting that a Chevy man buy an Oldsmobile instead - even though they might be 98% identical - would be akin to asking him to cheat on his wife. These days, as businesses look to streamline not only production but also sales and marketing, the wisdom of maintaining three, four, five, or more different product lines has come into question. Customer loyalty be damned, there's cost-saving measures to be had.

In my lifetime, GM has always had the largest umbrella. Cadillac, Buick, and (to a lesser extent) Oldsmobile were the higher echelons; Pontiac, Chevrolet, and (later) Saturn were the entry level brands. GMC continues to exist for some reason known only to GM's corporate masters - is there even one vehicle made with a GMC badge that doesn't also wear a bowtie? One-offs like Hummer, Saab, and (in the olden days), the Opel marque would come and go, sometimes hiding their affiliation with GM, sometimes brandishing it proudly. Ford has always been Ford/Lincoln Mercury; with Ford being the entry level, Mercury in the middle, and Lincoln the high end models. Chrysler aped Ford with the three-tiered effect, going Plymouth-Dodge-Chrysler from bottom up.

For now, though, let us toast the last of the Mercurys. No longer will the Capri be the poor cousin to the Mustang, nor the Cougar the twin of the Thunderbird. The Grand Marquis will no longer shuttle Q-tips to and from their destinations at speeds sometimes approaching that of a riding mower. We can finally stop pretending that the Mountaineer is anything other than an Exploder with the Mercury swoop rather than the Ford blue oval. While the 1950 Merc may have been the bad-ass car di tutti bad-ass cars, those days have long-since passed, going the way of the tailfin and the leaded gasoline engine.

Goodbye, Mercury, messenger of the gods.

That is all.