Ford finally dropping the Mercury

[Mac]

Been rumored for awhile.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/03/business/03mercury.html?src=busln
Dave

 

[bcost882]

yea, i was wondering why it was putting out the expense to modify the ford vehicles to sell as mercury. I'm not really upset, hopefully they move over to ford mostly

 

[Epixstar]

streamline to survive thats what its about

 

[Quartermile]

The "One Ford Plan". I wont be surprised if Lincoln goes in the future too. What they will probably do is offer another trim level package to get the lincoln interior upgrades and such but drop the line.

 

[gwaii]

makes sense,but still sad to see it go.not a big gm fan,but i felt the same way for pontiac.seems all the good old brands(remember amc?)are being replaced by things from korea and china....oh well,what can you do...

 

[Will]

Lincoln isn't going away. They compete with Cadillac, Lexus, Acura, Mercedes--the higher end stuff. Mercury, like Oldsmobile and Pontiac, sort of lost their place as the grey area grew between the basic model and the upgraded trim packages on the basic model.

 

[mjonesjr]

This has been a long time coming.

Like Will said, Mercury has lost their place in the market. There is no room for a manufacture to have their standard line and 1 luxury line (Ford & Lincoln).

With the options that are available on the Ford line of cars, there is no need for a middle of the road car.

I also look for GM to phase out GMC.

 

[Ranger Kip]

mercury had some good unique cars back in the day, like the cougar

 

[BeefStew42791]

They compete with Cadillac, Lexus, Acura, Mercedes--the higher end stuff.

am I the only one who sees something wrong with this?...

 

[mjonesjr]

am I the only one who sees something wrong with this?...

Acura is Honda's luxury brand in America. The same way Infinity is Nissan's luxury brand in America.

 

[adsm08]

Yeah, Acura is sold as Honda's "Luxury" brand, not that I'm overly convinced of that myself.

Acuras seem to me to be more performance than luxury, but then Honda has more or less catered to the tuner/sport crowd almost from the beginning.

 

[trader007]

I also look for GM to phase out GMC.

lol... "general motors company should phase out the brand general motors company". if anything, chevy would be the brand eliminated.... wouldnt it?

 

[backroad101]

Not sure why this did not happen with the restyle of the Milan and Mariner. Ford's upper trim lines are just as nice as anything mercury has. And if there is still a spot missing, Ford can just create a top trimline (like Platinum) for it's current line of cars to take up the slack. Now Ford will be more in line with it's competition in having a core and luxury brand:

Toyota / Lexus
Honda / Acura
Nissan / Infiniti
VW / Audi
Chevy GMC / Buick (I think Caddy competes more with the RWD Germans than the above listed FWDs)

Ford / Lincoln

 

[Ranger Kip]

lol... "general motors company should phase out the brand general motors company". if anything, chevy would be the brand eliminated.... wouldnt it?

You have to remember, Chevy makes cars too.

 

[gwaii]

lol... "general motors company should phase out the brand general motors company". if anything, chevy would be the brand eliminated.... wouldnt it?

gmc actually stands for 'general motors commercial' and back in the day were the major truck manufacturing branch of gm.these days it has become no more than a different tag on a chev truck.the car and truck manufacturing has become too blended to require a seperate brand,at least for light trucks.