Law and Rights
Things have been rough at the Mercury brand. Since 2000 the sales of Mercury motor vehicles have plummeted 74%. Rumor has it that Ford has had enough of the failing brand.
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Law and Rights
Is Ford Killing Off the Mercury Marque?
Things have been rough at the Mercury brand. Since 2000 the sales of Mercury motor vehicles have plummeted 74%. Rumor has it that Ford has had enough of the failing brand.
Automotive News reports that industry insiders are saying that top executives at Ford are planning the demise of the Mercury label, to be presented to company directors in July. Apparently the plan is to convince the Mercury dealers, who also sell the Lincoln brand, to merge the leftover Lincoln dealerships with the Ford dealerships.
The move by Ford follows in the wake of Ford's selling off the Volvo, Jaguar, Land rover and Aston Martin brands during the last three years.
Curiously enough, The Mercury brand was started by Edsel Ford, the son of company founder Henry Ford. The Edsel, of course, is a brand sold by Ford that died long ago.
Mercury's best days were in 1978 when it still only sold just under 600,000 vehicles, but by last year that number had been shaved to just barely over 92,000. As for market share, a mere 0.9 percent of all vehicles sold in the first quarter of 2010 bore the Mercury brand.
Of all the Ford-made vehicles sold (all Ford's, Lincoln's, and Mercury's combined), in our experience Mercury had far fewer lemons than the Ford or Lincoln brands. That follows the path led by GM when it killed off its most reliable product, the Oldsmobile years ago, and then followed that last year with the death of its second most reliable brand, Pontiac.
It's almost like they learn to build it right and then kill the brand because marketing is all hot to sell something else instead of reliability. Maybe Detroit just needs to kill off some of those marketers who are more interested in selling the sizzle than they are the reliable steak?
So, for now, be careful about buying a Mercury. You could be the last one on the road.
Burdge Law Office
www.NewCarLemonLaw.com
Because life's too short to drive a lemon.
Subscribe in a reader- Flammable Fords Still On The Road, 8.4 Million
Federal safety regulators at NHTSA just released a warning that there are still about 8.4 million Fords on the road that are subject to the "it can burn up at any time" recalls of 14 million Fords between 1999 and 2009. If you know anyone with one of...
- Big 3 Fight For 4
Toyota USA sold more than Ford did last year, bumping Ford Motor Co. down to the No. 3 spot. Last year Toyota sold 2.62 million cars and trucks last year while Ford sold 2.56 million, according to Automotive News Data Center statistics. General Motors...
- Recall Parts Shortage At Ford
Apparently ?parts is parts? ain?t necessarily so. At least not at Ford. Ford has admitted that it does not have enough repair parts on hand to fix all the 1.25 million passenger cars it recalled for a deadly cruise control switch fire hazard. Worse yet,...
- Jaguar Sales Down, Happiness Up
Jaguar sales in the US are down 27% below last year, for the first 6 months. But JD Powers (the survey people) say Jaguar tops all others when it comes to Customer Service. The sales slump might explain why Ford has Jaguar up for sale, along with its...
- Abbott & Costello Running Ford?
Who's on first, what's on second, and I don't know's on third, said Abbott and Costello. You have to wonder if the same thought process is happening at Ford. Just last week Ford continued its bragging about how successful the Ford Five...