Mercury Brand May See the Sunset...

Is it finally time for the Mercury brand to fade away? Some in the industry are spurring up the rumor that top executives from Ford will be creating a plan to kill the brand. The proposal will be presented to the company directors in July. It may be time that those rumors begin to come true, and for many, the time may be right. The brand represented less than 2% of Ford Motor Company's sales in first quarter, 2009, and according to inside information, the remaining family members, that still own 40% of the total company, feel that it a good brand decision to eliminate Mercury.

Honestly, when was the last time that Mercury was a stand alone idea? The brand continues to lose models and barely markets itself at all. Once in the shadow of Ford, now solidly in the shadow of Lincoln, the brand that was named after the Roman god Mercury, was built to be the continuation between the two powerhouse brands. The brand was developed by Henry's son Edsel. The name was to symbolize dependability, eloquence, speed and skill for the consumer that could not afford the Lincoln, but was beyond the Ford, a hierarchy very much like General Motors build with all 6 its original brands. The first Mercury to hit the streets was the Mercury Eight, designed and launched in 1938 for the '39 model year. The Eight was considered a "Super Ford" with 10 more horsepower than the Ford V8 had. The price point on the original model placed it between the $700 Ford and the $1,400 Lincoln Zephyr. Mercury sold 70,835 vehicles in its first model year.

More recently, Mercury had three vehicles take home the Consumers Digest Best Buy award in 2008, including the Milan. The Mariner Hybrid is a leading gas/electric vehicle with a ranking 34 mph City and 30 mpg Hwy.

So what will need to happen before the brand goes away? Most likely Ford will want to merge the few remaining Lincoln/Mercury stores with Ford stores, not that there are too many left that don't have all three brands already.  If Ford decides to kill it, I can't imagine they will let many dealers hold out on making the decision to merge.

Let's see what happens and see if we watch another brand bite the dust in 2010. You decide, is it time? Is this a good thing? Or will anyone even notice?