03-08-06: When is the last time you bought one? When is the last time you considered one? That’s right, sales figures show it. Mercury sales have been dropping for years. In the scheme of Ford Motor Company total sales, the brand has become but a small blip on the balance sheet. Just through February this year sales show another 10.8% drop year over year. It is my assessment that Mercury has been devoid of a soul and a direction for two decades now with no change in sight. Even with supposedly exciting new models like the Mariner Hybrid and Milan, their market share continues to dwindle.

Brand managers have struggled over the past two decades to recast Mercury to different demographic groups. Somebody, anybody who will buy the cars. In the late ‘80’s it was “young upwardly-mobile 30-somethings“. In the 1990’s it was someone who wanted a Taurus, only better. Perhaps the rental car return seekers. A couple years ago they built the Marauder high performance version of the Marquis for an audience the brand had abandoned in the long long-ago. The latest targets for Mercury are young women who want style and panache. Oh, well that is for the Milan and Mariner. The Marquis and Monterey mini-van is still for the well heeled retiree looking for Walgreen’s on every corner. And who is supposed to buy the Mountaineer? Well guess what? It isn’t working.

The problem isn’t marketing. The problem is that people are wise to badge engineering and Mercury models stand out with the thinnest excecution of it. Do we really need a Ford Freestar or a Fusion with a different grille treatment? Do people really want to buy that? Granted, the Mercury Grand Marquis sells better than the Crown Victoria to the Sun City set, but they’d buy a Crown Vic or a Town Car if they had no other choice. There is the old saying after all, “You cant sell an old man’s car to a young man, but you can sell a young man’s car to an old man.”

At General Motors, models sharing the same platform are now significantly different from one another. You really cant tell a Pontiac G6 or Chevy Malibu are the same car underneath. On the other hand, Mercury models are clearly a trim level and nothing more. In fact some would go so far as to say the trim applications are laughably ill-conceived as change for change sake.

Like GM did with Oldsmobile, perhaps it is time to peruse the concept that Mercury’s time in the light has passed. With all the footprint downsizing and finding a new “Way Forward“, maybe devoting the valuable resources for design and engineering to Lincoln where it really could pay off would be wise bold move. Even that division has its problems right now, but the brand image is still intact and worthy of more investment.

I just see this situation for Ford such that they need to cut costs. They have two layers of design and marketing departments to sell essentially the same cars. That is unnecessary cost and overhead. There are more dealers out there than there should be. This causes a fiercer level of competition in showrooms for them to survive which leads to lower profits all around, not to mention lower resale values due to all the fire selling. Most Mercury dealers are paired with a Ford or Lincoln franchise so losing the brand wont be a death knell for most operations.

If Ford can cut the cord on groups such as SVT that actually sold cars and set an image for the brand, why not Mercury?

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