Mercury Product Plans Revealed! Size Matters.

by Robert Farago

Published: July 26th, 2008

mercury product plans revealed size matters

Well, finally. The Blue Oval Boyz promised to unveil a new product plan for their Mercury brand on the same day their financials were revealed. Nope. I guess FoMoCo didn't want to steal the "thunder" of the press release re: the 2010-or-bust-and-maybe-even-then Mexican-built (but Euro-style) Ford Fiesta and Focus. Anyway, enough scene setting (it was a dark and stormy car market). Here's Mercury's new theme song, as sung by Derrick Kuzak, Ford's global product chief, [via The Detroit News]: "Ford Motor Co. will reposition Mercury as an entry-level premium brand that will support Lincoln [which] will no longer get any smaller vehicles, as had been planned, while Mercury will only get smaller cars and crossovers." In practice, the Sable dies, the Mercury Mariner and Milan live (with hybrid versions) and the brand gets a new, new-Focus-based sedan as and when. MA Lincoln Mercury dealer Chris Lemley responded to the revelations from the bowels of the Faint Praise Department. "Not only is some product news better than no product news, but some Mercury strategy is better than not having one." How great is that?

Robert Farago

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4 of 27 comments

Snapper35 on Jul 28, 2008
You mean police, taxi, and limo is NOT a mass market? On top of that, it’s a captive market because there is no one else in that space. To abandon it would be insane. Cough cough... Charger?

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John Williams on Jul 28, 2008
"Cough cough… Charger?" The Charger is relatively cramped for its size -- I doubt it'll be a better fit for RWD fleets than the CV/GM duo.

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Turbobeetle on Jul 28, 2008
"Ford Motor Co. will reposition Mercury as an entry-level premium brand that will support Lincoln Talk about reinventing the square wheel here... I thought this was what Merc was already doing? So just what is changing here? This makes it sound like Ford is just going to kick back and keep pressing the reset button on Mercury until *maybe* they get what they want, or just kills it. As I mentioned in a different blog, they need make more drastic changes with this company if its not feasible to just kill it off. All I see them doing is saying "yay, we made changes; but not really". I strongly feel that the name Mercury should be changed to something new to get away from the "its just a Ford with overprices chrome" mentality. If not, then what kind of changes could Ford expect to get back out of this division? Make this division of Ford like Scion, and sell the small fuel efficient cars that everyone is buying or wants to buy instead of selling redundant oversized cars that overlap both Ford and Lincoln.

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Hwyhobo on Jul 28, 2008

snapper35 wrote: Cough cough… Charger? Charger is a small player in that market compared to CV/GM. On top of that, given Chrysler's uncertain future, many will not risk making long-term commitments of this sort.

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