First Pontiac and now this! Come on!

The Blog of Cars, how wonderful it is to see you, you look younger than ever, did you get a new haircut? Seriously, thanks to everyone that made the redesign of The Blog of Cars possible.

Now let’s get down to business, a bit late of course but this is worth mentioning even now. After over 70 years of pushing out luxury Fords, Mercury is going to be shut down indefinitely.

Unlike Pontiac, I’ve never had a soft spot for Mercury, throughout my lifetime they’ve only been churning out Fords with a different badge and overall not adding anything even remotely special to overall motoring experience.Not even the European sourced Cougar would tickle my fancy. However, in 2003 this arrived:

The Marauder was a dream turned into reality by one of the dullest, blandest, most uninteresting brands in history. Not only was it based on the Panther platform which I adore, but it was powered by a 4.6L V8 making 305 hp, all while looking badass in black (They decided to offer other colors later). If classic American culture could be encapsulated in only one modern car, it would be this.

It was too good to be true. So naturally there were a couple of problems. Chief among which was a lack of oomph. 0-60 was dealt with in 7.7 seconds, which you’ll find is slower than a run of the mill Honda Accord. It also had an automatic gearbox with only four gears. One can only help but wonder how so much more faster this would’ve been is they had fitted another gearbox.

When the dust settled, only 11,052 were sold, making Ford pull the plug on this bucket of awesome only a year after it was released.

After the Marauder, it was pretty much business as usual, Fords with a Mercury badge and some faux wood thrown in. Even so, it’ll be sad to see them go. Unlike Saturn.

P.S: Before you close this article, have a look at this. Before the Marauder was released, Ford presented a concept version that was a bit more… interesting. I bet they would’ve sold a lot more if they offered this instead.