What do you get when you cross a panther and a gas crisis? Why, a Mercury Marquis, of course. In this case, not just any Marquis but a 1979 Mercury Marquis coupe. You don't see these every day, and you didn't see many "back in the day," either.
Years ago, it was the rare sedan that wasn't offered in both four- and two-door versions. Four-door sedans often sold at a premium, so if you wanted to save a buck or two, you bought the two-door.
With the increasing popularity of four-door sedans, which were considerably more practical than their two-door counterparts, sales of two-door models began to diminish. At best, they offered little more than a tad more styling elan than the four-door version. In the case of this '79, Mercury marketed its, ahem, sporty roofline to appeal to the fashion-conscious. Like many things, what's sporty and what's not is a matter of taste and opinion.
Somewhat ironically, though, while sales of ordinary two-door models were declining during the 1970s, sales of personal-luxury cars, which were predominantly two-door coupes, soared. In retrospect, especially in this day and age of do-everything-well sport utilities, it's a bit of a challenge to understand the appeal of personal-luxury cars, to say nothing of two-door sedans. You either get it, like I do, or you don't.
Although Ford advertised that its big cars were still full-sized for 1977 and 1978, it too downsized for 1979, when it introduced a new line of full-size Ford and Mercury models that were dramatically shorter and lighter than what they replaced. Ford's downsizing of its big cars for 1979 seemed almost inevitable by then, given the industry's response to increasingly stringent fuel-economy requirements.
The Big Three were all downsizing their full-sized cars to improve fuel economy and meet federal Corporate Average Fuel Economy, or CAFE, requirements. Ford's answer was the Panther platform, introduced for the 1979 model year. It was a rear-wheel-drive, body-on-frame architecture that underpinned the new Ford LTD and Mercury Marquis, as well as their station-wagon counterparts.
Ford's internal nickname for the new platform was Panther, while its smaller Fox platform had been introduced for 1978. The oft-repeated story that Ford's Fox platform was named after the Audi Fox, however, appears to be apocryphal. Ford was already using the "Fox" name internally by 1973, before the Audi Fox name was introduced in the United States.
Incidentally, a cougar and a "panther" aren't really different species of big cat. A cougar is a species, Puma concolor, also known as a mountain lion, puma or catamount. "Black panther" is a common name generally used for a melanistic leopard or jaguar. So the Panther name is more a colorful nickname than a reference to a particular species of cat.
Amazingly, considering Ford originally developed the Panther architecture as a solution to the fuel-economy and downsizing pressures of the late 1970s, it stuck around for 33 model years. Panther-based Ford, Mercury and Lincoln cars were produced through the 2011 model year, making the platform one of the longest-running production architectures in American automotive history.
The Mercury Marquis nameplate dated back to 1967. It was introduced as Mercury's new full-sized luxury model and was initially offered only as a two-door hardtop. When Ford redesigned its big cars for 1969, the Marquis was offered in four-door form as well.
When Ford rolled out the Panther-based Marquis and LTD for 1979, for the first time the two cars rode on the same basic chassis and the same 114.3-inch wheelbase. They also shared much of their underlying structure and body architecture. You wouldn't be alone in thinking this was a Ford LTD; it all but is.
Lincoln moved onto a longer-wheelbase version of the Panther architecture for 1980, when the new Continental debuted. The Town Car was initially a trim level of the Continental before becoming its own model for 1981. The Lincoln versions also received their own distinctive bodies rather than simply being rebadged Fords or Mercurys.
Despite their smaller external dimensions, these cars, like the downsized GM full-sized cars introduced earlier, offered surprisingly good interior room compared with what they replaced. Ford touted improved interior space and greater glass area, which improved outward visibility. The improved interior efficiency highlighted just how space-inefficient some of the enormous cars of the preceding era had become.
The days of form over function were, if not completely over, certainly numbered.
Ford kept making these handsome two-door coupes through 1987, but sales continued to decline. The Marquis name did indeed move to the smaller Fox platform for 1983, where Mercury offered a completely different, midsize four-door Marquis through 1986. It was then replaced by the all-new Mercury Sable, the Mercury counterpart to the Ford Taurus.
Meanwhile, the Panther-based four-door Marquis continued under a new name: Grand Marquis. Mercury introduced the Grand Marquis as a separate model for 1983, and it remained part of the Mercury lineup all the way through 2011. Unlike the earlier Panther Marquis, the Grand Marquis eventually became a four-door sedan-only model.
The Grand Marquis name itself wasn't entirely new, however. It had been used as a high-level trim designation on the full-sized Marquis beginning in the 1970s.
1979 was by far the best-selling year for the Panther-based Marquis coupe. Mercury built 20,662 of them that year. Coupe production plunged to just 4,874 in 1980 and continued falling thereafter. By the end of the 1979–1982 run, only 31,311 Panther Marquis coupes had been built.
So, while this '79 isn't exactly a one-of-a-kind unicorn, it's certainly an uncommon survivor—and considerably rarer today than its four-door brethren.
