This commercial for Mercury's Grand Marquis was a not so gentle reminder that things were going to change for the big "Panther" come 1992. These cars and it's fraternal twin Ford Crown Victoria getting the "aero" treatment for '92 similar to what Ford breathed on the Lincoln Town Car in 1990. The new cars used the same chassis, what Ford called "Panther", were rear wheel drive, body on frame and had a V-8 engine although it was Ford's relatively space age, at least for the time, overhead cam "modular" V-8 rather than a god's green earth, overhead valve, "pushrod" engine. What is it they say about as much as things change they remain the same?
I thought they were a tad odd since, to me at least, the "new" cars retained most if not all of the attributes that the old cars had and after twelve years, even someone like myself, who's somewhat abhorrent to change, welcomed something different. Maybe they felt much of their targeted clientele might have left the old "boxy" Panthers behind once they got a load of the new models. Who knows. Anyway, I found our 1989 "Grand Mark" here this morning as I was doing one of my "cheap car" searches on cars.com and it brought back a ton of memories. Make that two tons. Sorry, couldn't resist.
Things sure have changed, haven't they? I mean, not only is Mercury gone nearly a decade but Ford not only doesn't build any rear wheel drive, V-8 sedans any more, for all intents and purposes, these days - they don't even build cars. So, forgive me if I wax a little nostalgic here today for the way that things used to be.
It seemed like way back in the olden days there were two distinct groups of car buyers - young, or young at heart and old. Or old at heart, like I used to be. At late and usually not so great Mercury, their Sable was for the young buyers while the big ole Grand Marquis was for the oldsters or those resistant to change. Same went for Ford with the Crown Victoria and the Taurus. Those who drove one of these because they were either in the service industry or given one as part of their employment, of course, are exempt from either gross generalizations. Drive a Sable and a Grand Marquis back to back and I'd be hard pressed to believe anyone would say that the Grand Marquis was the better driver. As far as the physical appearance goes, well, I can understand how someone could have construed the Sable as being too "out there" at the time and have gone running to the safe confines of what they were familiar with.
In many ways, these cars were never really new. While they were certainly "all-new" in 1979 when Ford finally downsized their full size wares going so far as to introduce an all new chassis they called "Panther", Lincoln followed suit in 1980, much like GM's ballyhooed 1977 downsizing, the new big Ford's didn't really advance the state of the art of automotive engineering much. Mechanically, they were a rehash of the same old, same old that had been around since well before World War II. Body on frame, engine up front, drive shaft to a live, leaf spring sprung rear axle, recirculating ball steering. Rack and pinion steering? Independent rear suspension? Struts? Nope.
As far as having efficient interior design, that was a different story. Remarkably, the new "big" Fords had more genuinely usable space inside despite losing more than a foot of length and just over two inches of width. They also lost some six hundred pounds. While the shrinkage was done primarily at the behest of fuel economy, in addition to the commodious new interiors, their trunks were larger too, there were also benefits to maneuverability and handling. To those ends, progress was made. Ford freshened the package in 1987 eschewing some of the boxiness of the design. Sadly, two door versions didn't survive the tasteful albeit slight reboot.
You have to wonder, though, what America would have thought of the Sable and Taurus had Ford introduced them back in 1979. In hindsight it's easy to say that they would have been accepting of the jelly bean shaped little cars that rocked the world in 1985 as 1986 models, but keep in mind that in 1979, imports were just beginning to get a real foothold in this country. American's still liked their beef and white bread although they were leery of how large they had become. Something had to be done regardless of whether or not there were gas crunches or not. Introducing new think like the Sable and Taurus in '79 may have been too much to handle. We'll never know.
Some people say that change is good. Well, it's only good if in fact it is good. Change, if anything, is stressful and the older we get and the more experience we have the more we can evaluate the prospect of change and appreciate everything that it entails. In the mid 1980's, both Ford and GM had plans to discontinue producing body on frame, rear wheel drive sedans when they introduced their new front wheel drive designs. Some bright executive had the foresight to give the big old timers a stay of execution. As much as things change they remain the same? That might be true only to a certain degree. GM kept building them through 1996 while Ford, no doubt due to the fact they had a market onto themselves, kept pushing out them out until 2011.
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