The Merkur: Rural Juror of cars

"472CID" (472CID) 11/09/2013 at 10:42 • Filed to: None

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A)Customer "I want to think that I've bought a luxury car without having bought a luxury car"

Dealer: "Have you seen our Merkur? it's European"

Customer "You mean Mercury?"

Dealer "It's German for Mercury"

Customer "..."

Also it's just plain strange to say.

Grindintosecond > 472CID 11/09/2013 at 10:48

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Ill have to read about Merkur and why they tried to market that name because they should have just sold it as a Ford Sierra. It would have sold much better......but then would have interferred with the mustang and the SVO too........ah! Mercury Sierra? that would have been better.

Michael Ballaban > 472CID 11/09/2013 at 10:59

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Uh oh, yous in trouble now.

!!! UNKNOWN CONTENT TYPE !!!

Leon711 > 472CID 11/09/2013 at 10:59

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Yeah there's nothing remotely luxurious about any Ford Sierra. But they were frequently stolen in the UK. IIRC either the Sierra or Escort Cosworth became near uninsurable in the UK as they were so frequently stolen.

Goshen, formerly Darkcode > Grindintosecond 11/09/2013 at 11:01

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FoMoCo turning Mercury in more or less what GM would turn Buick.

Makes perfect sense, sir!

raygone > Grindintosecond 11/09/2013 at 11:18

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If I remember correctly, they couldn't market it as the Sierra because the General would have had an issue with it due to having trademarked the Sierra name in the US (GMC Sierra). Similar thing to why the Mustang wasn't marketed as a Mustang in Europe. (Krupp had a trademark on the Mustang name in Europe so it was called the T5 instead)

472CID > Michael Ballaban 11/09/2013 at 11:42

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It's not slander if it's all facts. Also it's fitting that it has an equally awkward model (or trim?) name - XR4Ti

Grindintosecond > raygone 11/09/2013 at 12:30

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Ahhh thank you. Makes sense now. They should never had made the mustang SVO, just brought this in and called it the 'Ford SVO' and left the stang be what it is.

raygone > Grindintosecond 11/09/2013 at 12:42

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As much as I agree with you, the Mustang SVO was just a product of the time; and funnily enough, until the 5.0 EFI debuted in '86 it was the highest performing Mustang for the years it was produced (1984-1986). That and the whole idea with the Merkur brand was to import top models from Ford of Europe. If they had debuted Merkur earlier, there might have been time to retool for airbags in the 90s; but there would still have to be improvements to marketing for any sort of success. I look at it as somewhat of an 80s equivalent to the GTO failure. (too long to import, wasn't styled right for the times, even though I don't really like the retro design fad)

Grindintosecond > raygone 11/09/2013 at 13:53

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Agreed.