Mercury's 71 Year Run Coming to End.

Eventually, will we get down to just one? I wonder which brand it will be.

If you're speaking of Ford, it will be a Ford, and it will come only in black!

Will have to be something Chinese or Indian... Maybe a Tata?

epmeyer50 beat me to it. I was going to say, Made in China? cuhulin

personally, i don't see how this is going to work out long term. Most Lincoln dealers are Mercury dealers. Kill Mercury, that does not leave them enough to sell to maintain franchise. Unless ford kills the stand alone Lincoln dealer and folds it into a ford franchisee. Time will tell how smart at decision it was.

bob

From what I have read, Ford plans to give Lincoln a broader range of vehicles. Essentially they want to make Lincoln like Lexus - just sell a range of higher priced pimped out version of their standard produccts with maybe one or two unique offering at the high end. The strategy has worked well for Toyota.

Ed

Groucho Marx (You Bet Your Life, old tv shows I used to watch on tv) used to advertise DeSoto Plymouth cars. cuhulin

I think the public has caught on to the banana in the tail pipe gig of rebranding cars with higher end accessories. Look what GM did, cut Pontiac, olds, Saturn. You cannot say that Toyota is not looking over there corporate shoulders now. Its not to say that a "Lincoln on steroids" may not be successful selling cars, but as a stand alone franchise, is it going to be economically feasible? What are they going to do? do a Lincoln "SHO me the money" Taurus with leather cup holders?

I think the pinnacle joke of rebadging and rebranding was the Cadillac Cimarron. That was polishing a turd bright brown.

You got to admire Ford for how they weathered this storm in the economy. but this Mercury thing has me wondering about there thinking now.

bob

Ford could doll up some Fords and call them Mercurys. Wait, that's what they did before!

Your Bet Your Life (Groucho Marx tv game shows) were almost canceled before they got started.They wanted him to wear a clown coustume and a painted on mustache.He told them if he can't be funny without that, To hell with it.

cuhulin .............................................. ''Say the secret word and win a 100 dollars'' ..............................................

Caught a ride in South DakotAH Two girls in a light blue DesotAH One was named Jane The other was plain But they both had racing motAHs

"B-Movie" Joliet Jake (AKA John Belushi), Blues Brothers

A blonde gal was driving her car in South Dakota.She saw another blonde gal rowing a boat across a corn field.She stopped her car, she hollered out to the gal in the boat, Hey you, stop that.You are going to give us blondes a bad name! cuhulin

From what I read, most Ford dealerships handle Ford, Lincoln and Mercury, so there will be a lower impact that one might think. Some 1600 dealerships may be involved initially. IIRC, Ford will try to expand these with the Ford and Lincoln lines.

Warranty, service, and parts for Mercury will continue at these dealerships.

Nightmare Alley, old 1947 movie is on the FMC movie channel.Tyrone Power and Joan Blondell riding in a DeSoto taxi cab.Those old DeSotos were some of the best looking cars ever with the waterfall grill and the square headlight openings, in my opinion.I need to find me one of those old DeSoto cars, in resonably good condition and the price is right and if I don't have to travel too far to check it out. Chrysler ought to resurect (bring back) the DeSoto cars. cuhulin

There are very few stand-alone L-M dealers left- most have other brands. (They had to, to have a full line and a full lot.) And most are owned by parent companies that also own Ford dealerships. In this town, the local Ford dealer picked up the L-M franchise (and the then-controlled-by-Ford Mazda franchise as well) a couple of years ago. The previous franchise owner was heavily into his Mopar franchise down the street, and the old L-M store was tiny and landlocked, so when Ford leaned on him, he said the hell with it and sold it. The building is abandoned now. Ford will have to throw some money at some dealers, especially in towns where a new Ford store would poach sales from the guy down the street. And there will be some shotgun weddings. The days of every small town having a dealer for every brand are pretty much over. The Japanese brands showed that a business model of one store every 30-40 minutes of driving time, is plenty. And if sales don't support that many, cherry-pick the dense urban areas, and forget about the real small towns. Nearest German-brand dealers are now an hour from here. Not many German cars in this town any more.

Heard yesterday that Mercury sales had dropped from an alltime high of about 500,000 units per year, to less than 100,000 last year. That still sounds like a lot of money, but many not in today's world.

It is not a brand I will personally miss.