Ford Makes an Announcement

Earlier this month Ford announced that they will end production of Mercury brand vehicles by the end of this year. This news has many Mercury owners and faithful followers like myself, (my first car was a 1978 Mercury Cougar) feeling a bit sentimental and worried about how this is going to affect Mercury models that are still on the road.

How This Will Affect Mercury Customers

In order to allay Mercury customer fears, Ford says that they “will continue to provide existing and future Mercury owners with parts and service support at Ford and Lincoln dealers, and honor current warranties and Ford’s Extended Service Plans”. Since all Ford vehicles are practically identical part-wise, there won’t be any difficulty for consumers to get the parts and service that they need.

The 72-years of Mercury’s history started in 1935 during the Depression, when Ford began Mercury production to catch-up with General Motors after they passed them to become the nation’s best-selling vehicle manufacturer. By the 1950’s, Mercury had become a household name, thanks to James Dean’s driving a black Mercury coupe in the film “Rebel Without a Cause”.

But, that momentum has slowly come to an end.

Ford made the decision to stop production comes after their annual business review showed that this year has seen a record decline in sales (less than 1% of the American market share) in Mercury vehicles. This is the latest effort of Detroit car manufacturers to cuts costs in a hope that this will see a rise in automotive sales by cutting out this low demand mid-range brand.

The only ones who would seem to be in danger of losing something from this arrangement are the 1,712 dealerships that currently have Mercury models on their lots. Ford says that, overall, the loss should not be felt strongly since none of them are Mercury brand stand-alone dealerships.

The dealerships will, however, have to lay off workers and close some showrooms. It will be most difficult for Mercury-Lincoln dealerships than for Ford-Mercury-Lincoln dealerships, since the latter will simply shift over to focus on sales of other Ford brands.  The Mercury-Lincoln dealers are in danger of going out of business if they are unable to bring up their Lincoln sales, a point that concerns many of their employees.

To take the Mercury’s place in the production line, they plane on focusing on investing more in fewer models, especially the Lincoln luxury brands and compact Lincolns that are the same size as the Ford Focus and all the models will have the option of EcoBoost turbocharged V-6 engines.

Ford says that from a general financial standpoint, this is the only decision that they could make, and they predict that they will see a good profit margin this year. And that seems to have begun to happen. After making the announcement Ford shares rose almost 4 percent – a promising start to their proposed internal overhaul.