Junkyard Find: 1985 Mercury Grand Marquis LS Colony Park Station Wagon
The popularity of the full-size station wagon went into steep decline during the course of the 1980s, thanks to competition from minivans and less truck-ish SUVs, and there wasn’t a particularly compelling reason to get a Mercury wagon instead of its near-identical, cheaper Ford sibling, so the 1979-1991 Mercury Grand Marquis Colony Park wagon was uncommon then and near-extinct now. I do see some Ford LTD Country Squires in wrecking yards nowadays— this ’86 woodie and this ’87 woodie, for example— but this Colony Park is the first I’ve seen in at least a decade.
This generation of Colony Park wasn’t quite as majestic as its 1950s and 1960s predecessors, but it also got about twice as many miles per gallon as those barges.
The good old familiar 302-cubic-inch Windsor V8, still fitted with a carburetor in 1985, powered this wagon.
Opera lights!
This fender trim has a very maze-like shape.
Are there little speakers in the steering wheel, or are those holes merely decorative?
The Colorado sun has not been kind to these leather seats.
The Grand Marquis kicked some Buick and Oldsmobile butt, to hear Mercury tell it.
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Merc wagons were more common in Chicago area, since this used to be Buick-Olds-Pontiac's biggest market. Many BOP buyers went to L-M afraid of FWD in 80's. But also, L-M pushed hard in the 70's during the personal lux era, and former Cougar owners went to Marquis.
With the towing package and Trac Loc rear axle, these drove like sport sedans. I had two of these as project cars, '87 and '90 and they drove better than average full sizers. But rust, gas prices, and unemployment killed the dream of keeping them longer.