September Sales Snapshot: If Mazdas Were Mercurys…

In my dream world, Mazda and Volvo would tie the knot (or at least Mazda buy a significant stake) and in exchange bring Ford and Mazda even closer together. There are so many Lincoln, Mercury, Mazda, Volvo dealers around. And now some of them are FLM Volvo Mazda. Kill the right M, invest in Lincoln, share platforms and engine tech with Mazda Volvo... ... but that does ignore reality for the moment, which takes me back to: what is the point of this post? One thing I will note is that Mariner had a particularly rough month for a very particular reason: there were less than 1,000 of them on dealer lots heading into the month of September. But in general, you can never expect a gussied-up clone sold at 1/8th as many dealers to have anywhere near the sales of its sibling. Which is why Mercury must die. MKX and Edge job1 dates are in May - some new sheet metal, all new interiors, upgraded engines, etc.

Maybe I'm missing something here, but looking at those numbers, Ford ought to just slip Mercury some pink-death and keep Mazda at arm's length with a long pole. Sure, Mercury's numbers are depressing, but Mazda's are pretty suckified too...with the exception of the new Mazda3 (which isn't exactly burning it up on the hotness scale). Other than that model, what would Mazda bring to a Ford dealership? Slow selling, bloated Mazda6's...which would cannibalize the Quattro Schick? And Mazda CUVs/SUVs/MomVans aren't exactly tearing up the scene either, so how does that help Ford when they can't even move their own craptacular offerings? No, Ford needs to tamper with Jill Wagner's brakes, sell Volvo to a Russian gangster and tell the "Children of the Corn/Zoom-Zoom" kid to stay off the lot. In other words, Ford needs to start being a smaller, smarter Ford. But that ain't gonna happen, right?