Mercury automobile history
Mercury was its own division at Ford until 1945 when it was combined with Lincoln in the Lincoln-Mercury Division, with Ford hoping the brand would be known as "junior Lincoln", rather than a Ford top range. In 1949, Mercury introduced the first of the "new look", integrated bodies, at the same time that Ford and Lincoln also changed radically in style. Again, in 1952, Mercury offered a further modernization in its look. In 1958, Lincoln-Mercury Division and the ill-fated Edsel brand were joined into the Mercury-Edsel-Lincoln Division, with the demise of Edsel in 1960, she was in the Lincoln-Mercury Division ever since.
Mercury, like the defunct Edsel, was created from scratch, rather than being a takeover of an existing company like Lincoln. Mercury's heyday was in the 1950s, when its formula of stretching and lowering existing platforms Ford was a great success. The brand has changed several times during its history. During the 1940s and 1950s, to circulate between as a "gussied up" Ford, Lincoln to a "junior" and had even created his own body design. From the late 1950s through the 1960s and early 1970s, Mercury began to distance itself from Ford and offered several different models of care such as the Turnpike Cruiser, Park Lane, Cougar and Marquis. During Ford Division "Total Performance" era in the early 1960s, Mercury produced some equivalent models, such as full-size S-55 and the Marauder, who share the same body styles and mechanics as the Ford Galaxie 500 / XL models sport. The Mercurys were somewhat successful in big race. But in the late 1970s to early 1980s the brand was joined at the hip with Ford again and its image has suffered accordingly.Mercury sales peaked in 1978 to 580,000 and in 1993 to over 480,000. Since then, sales have fallen by more than half to around 200,000 per year. In the mid 1990s the car brand Mercury has received very good free PR when country music star Alan Jackson scored a hit with a cover of KC Douglas' "Mercury Blues", a song of praise on their free range of vehicles.
Mercury has had a few unique models not shared with Ford interior, but most often related to other vehicles sold domestically or globally. These include the Capri convertible (which shares parts with the Mazda 323, but was not as popular, ending production in Australia in 1993), Mercury Tracer (later shared with the escort, but was a Mexican version of Building Mazda 323 Hatchback in the 1980 and '90), Mercury Villager (a name previously used as a luxury break, but of 1993-2003, it was a minivan shared with Nissan, which sold its version as research and built the powerplant for both versions), Mercury Cougar (1999-2002, based on the Ford Contour / Mercury Mystique / Ford Mondeo platform but sporting a 2-door, hatchback only Bodystyle with sharp style that is not shared with the sedan more mundane), and the German construction Mercury Capri in the '70s (before that model moved to the Fox platform Ford as a twin to Ford Mustang). In 1971, the dealers also sold the De Tomaso Pantera, an exotic sports car with a Ford V-8.
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