Junkyard Find: 1989 Mercury Sable LS Sedan
Published: March 21st, 2016
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The first-generation Mercury Sable, like its revolutionary Ford Taurus sibling, was a smash sales hit. Then, well, the plastic in those cool-looking “lightbar” grilles yellowed after a few years, sales of later Sables declined, and then the 1986-1991 Sables were just about all gone. I don’t see many first-gen Sables at U-Yank-It yards these days, though they were not uncommon just a few years ago.Here is an appliance-white ’89 that I found in a Denver yard recently.
This lightbar doesn’t seem too bad. Perhaps I should have purchased it for our resident Mercury lover.
The Ford Keyless Entry keypad dates all the way back to the 1980 model year, and continues in use on 2016 Fords (though the hardware looks a bit different than it did in the 1980s).
The LS was the top Sable trim level in 1989; the MSRP on this car was $15,095, versus $12,874 for a Taurus GL with V6 engine.
The interior is a symphony in hard beige plastic and tan velour.
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It’s true, other car companies were copying the looks of the Taurus/Sable.
Mercury: it’s worth it. Which is something of a defensive-sounding slogan.
How about a full minute of Rod Stewart scmhaltzily pitching the Mercury line, with emphasis on the first-gen Sable?Big-haired ’80s women prefer the Sable!
Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.
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My parents had a 1986 Sable LS Wagon, fully loaded sans the sunroof. We got the car in 1994 and It was a good car at first but it had sat in a barn for a few years before being bought by my folks. Beige with tan leather and basketweave wheels, the car looked great but had many electrical gremlins. Wipers would come on at random, radio would work when it wanted too, died on my mom a few times. We finally sold it in 1997 and it apparently caught fire after the sale because the guy my dad sold it to, called with complaints. Gremlins aside though, that car holds many of my fondest memories as a child. And it looked great when compared to the 1983 and 88 caprice wagons we had owned before. When I got my license, my first car was a 1992 Taurus GL sedan and then we had another 1993 GL Wagon. A 1997 GL sedan and my mom still using her 2004 SES. We have had a few Tauruses and always loved them. They are much better cars than they get credit for. We still have a 1992 Camry and that is a great car still in a lot of ways but I always liked the six passenger seating of the Taurus and the first two generations of style were great. I can think of no car that was as quintessential in the 1990's as the Taurus and the Sable.
When this came out, it looked like the future. Prior to this, most non-german mainstream cars looked and felt very pieced-together. The Taurus/Sable was a unified and clean design... relative to what else was on the market back in the 80s. And I love cars that have keypads. My Maxima had something similar, and I was able to leave the keys and everything locked in the car when I went to the beach or biking. Today it's not as necessary as long as you have a car where you can unlock the doors with your phone.