Lincoln-Mercury Dealers Facing Extinction
Ford says it's not killing Mercury but their actions indicate otherwise. In the past two years, The Blue Oval Boyz have cut their ranks by 400 dealers, mainly by merging the three brands under one roof in many areas. Automotive News [sub] reports that starting this week, Ford execs will tell the remaining stand-alone Lincoln-Mercury dealers their latest and greatest consolidation plan for rolling them into Ford dealerships. The dealers aren't overly pleased with the prospects, but they see the handwriting on the wall. While Ford says they stand behind the Mercury brand and will give it a new small car, "one Ford insider told Automotive News that company executives want to make it clear to dealers that no major influx of new product is coming for Mercury." Once the dealer consolidation is done, you can just about bet that the Mercury brand will be starved for product, with all of the new models going to Ford or Lincoln. Then it's just a matter of time before Mercury just fades away like DeSoto in the early 60s.
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Killing off Mercury ultimately hurts Lincoln the most. Lincoln cannot maintain a class image being sold in the same stores that sell Fords. Toyota doesn't try to pedal the Lexus in the same building that sells Toyotas. For the most part, even though it mixed Cadillac with Oldsmobile or even with Buick and Pontiac in smaller towns, GM didn't sell Cadillac and Chevy in the same dealership. At least since the '60's, Mercury has existed to provide enough volume to support Lincoln as a brand sold separately from Ford, without tarnishing the Lincoln image by associating too closely with the Ford line. After the damage Ford Motor has done to the Lincoln brand, to merge it into Ford showrooms is a perfect way to assure that Lincoln cannot compete with BMW, Audi, Lexus, or Cadillac
Neither Lincoln nor Mercury have a credible reason to exist. A) All their products (save the archaic Town Car) lose money. B) There is no cohesive image for either brand. C) Ford already has a luxury brand in Volvo that has already proven it can sell upscale, economical vehicles. Even the porker XC90 had a very good run for quite a while. As it pertains to C), Volvo is an incredibly under-invested brand at this point. Virtually all their vehicles are either old in tooth or had been developed with a brand draining focus of supporting other Ford divisions. Unfortunately I don't think Ford will make Volvo a success at all. In fact, other than Ford and Mazda, I don't see any of these brands surviving in five years as part of their prodding parent.
It is a shame...