2004 Mercury Marauder - Attack, Raid, Destroy

The dictionary defines "marauder" as a person or animal that roams from place to place looking for opportunities to attack, raid, or destroy. While The Big Three love alliteration to name their vehicles, "marauder" is still a rather curious moniker to use on a vehicle. The Ford Motor Company's late and most often not so great Mercury division named three supposedly high-performance, full-size cars such; from 1963 to 1965, 1969 and 1970 and in 2003 and 2004 when they gussied a Grand Marquis into the scariest grocery getter this side of the time I affixed an old lawn mower engine to a shopping cart. This 2004 found me on Facebook Marketplace for sale in the town just west of us here on the far west side of Cleveland, Ohio. 

Mercury sold just 11,052 of these cars combined in 2003 and 2004; 3,204 in 2004. Therefore, finding one these days is rare. Asking price is $10,000. 

Such a deal, right? Before you go running to the ATM, buyer beware. Apparently, the seller didn't heed the warning signs before buying it and now, it seems, they're trying to recoup their losses. 

Founded in 1938 as a mid-priced brand intended to bridge the price gap between Ford and Lincoln, Mercury spent much of its existence occupying an awkward spot in the Ford Motor Company hierarchy. Save for a smattering of models, such as the 1967–1970 Cougar, a Mercury was generally either a dressed-up Ford or a scaled-down Lincoln. The Cougar itself a dolled Mustang but they get a hall pass because they did such a nice job. Being sold primarily through Lincoln-Mercury dealers didn't exactly help establish Mercury as a brand with an identity of its own, either.

If anything, these cars most likely confused buyers. By the early to mid '00's, Mercury's image was so "old", this car was akin to hot-rodding the little bus that takes oldsters from the assisted living residence to the mall and back. Frankly, if they felt compelled to do something like this, had the Ford Motor Company simply hopped-up a Ford Crown Victoria with the same go-fast baubles and bits, it would have sold better. I'm sure there were 1994-1996 Chevrolet Impala SS fans who would have signed on the dotted line for a Crown Vic "SS". 

Sharing the Panther platform with the Ford Crown Victoria and Lincoln Town Car, Marauders got a number of heavy-duty chassis components and suspension upgrades, along with the 4.6-liter DOHC, 32-valve V-8 related to the engines used in the Mustang Mach 1 and Lincoln Aviator.

Stripped of much of the Grand Marquis' usual brightwork and dolled up with a monochromatic, blacked-out treatment, the Marauder also received plenty of chassis hardware to go with its sinister appearance. The suspension was considerably firmer than that of a standard Grand Marquis, with unique front springs, Tokico monotube shocks and a larger front anti-roll bar. In back, the car used load-leveling air springs, while the 2003 revision of the Panther platform brought rack-and-pinion steering and other chassis improvements.

The rims are 18-inchers shod with appropriately meaty tires, and they're staggered, the Marauder wearing 235/50R18 tires up front and 245/55R18s in back.

The rear axle ratio was also bumped from the Grand Marquis' typical 2.73 or 3.27 gearing to a 3.55:1 setup with a standard limited-slip differential. 

If these cars had an Achilles' bumper, it was under the hood.

Despite Roush Performance's involvement in developing the intake manifold and dual-exhaust system, the big 4.6-liter DOHC V-8 made 302 horsepower and 318 lb-ft of torque. That's respectable, but moving a roughly 4,200-pound barge with a four-speed automatic transmission isn't exactly a recipe for tire-smoking acceleration.

Contemporary road tests put zero-to-60 mph at roughly 7.5 seconds, while the quarter mile came in around 15.5 seconds at roughly 91 mph. Good, but hardly remarkable.

Fuel economy wasn't exactly the Marauder's strong suit, either. EPA ratings were only 15 mpg city and 21 mpg highway, and the 10.1:1 compression ratio meant Ford specified 91-octane premium unleaded for optimum performance.

An attempt to fix the lack of real go-power on this car was apparently made by the person from whom the current owner bought it.

An Eaton M112 supercharger was added, along with an Aeromotive 340 fuel pump, heat exchanger, intercooler, high-pressure fuel injectors and various other baubles and bits, all in the interest of literally boosting horsepower and torque. 

There are no raw numbers indicating what those mod expensive moifications did to the engine; I'd figure 60- to 75-horsepower, but there's a caveat: Although the person who posted the ad claims the car passed local emissions testing when they first bought it, something has apparently gone kablooey with the engine tune since. Not only will this thing no longer pass a local e-check, but it's not even running. 

Exhibit A, your honor, as to why you should never buy cars that were modified. Good luck finding a mechanic who'd even look at this thing. 

They can provide video of it running, though. 

 

1979 Mercury Marqus (Coupe!) - Hypocrites!

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.

1971 Mercury Marquis - Saturday Morning Cartoons

I blame my first car, a 1974 Mercury Comet four-door sedan, for my general disdain of four-door cars.  However, if I had to have a four-door, I'd like it to be a "hard top" like this 1971 Mercury Marquis I found for sale on Facebook Marketplace recently. The term "hardtop" denotes any car that lacks a center pillar or post and is derived from the look of convertibles, usually ones with just two-doors, with their top up. 

That's not to say I like this car. In addition to it being a four-door, I've never been much of a Ford girl although a Mustang or Thunderbird or two or three could rock my world. And as I get older, my appreciation for the squishy land yachts of my youth is waning. Still, for some reason I felt it my duty to blog about this '71 for no other reason than, again, as I've gotten older, I feel the ever widening "canyon of time" separating the present from my childhood. Here's to representing us kids who remember Kent State, the Paris Peace Accords, Nixon resigning and washed it all down with our faces glued to a small black and white TV watching Saturday morning cartoons. 

The bulk of my childhood was spent, and in more ways than one, "looking up" at the luxury leviathans like this huge Merc. And it is in fact huge - just over 224-inches long and that's without the clodhopper safety bumpers the government mandated starting out front in 1973 and back in '74. My tenderest of tender years spent in my father's literally rental-grade, 1968 Ford Ranch Wagon. A car so bare bones it had laminate flooring. At least it had seat belts not that we ever used them. Then again, they were federally mandated.   

All Mercury's and especially their top-of-the-line model was always a curiosity to me - why'd they bother? Ford had their plush LTD, upon which it was always based, and they were sold along side the tonier and more expensive Lincoln equivalent to the LTD. For the most part, "Mercury's" were little more than gussied up Fords but their being bundled or partnered with Lincoln at least gave them a veneer of prestige. My first car was a 1974 Mercury Comet (sedan, ugh!) and with its one or two "Lincoln-Mercury" badges, I kidded myself I was driving something more than a Ford Maverick. 

Was this Marquis more than an LTD or less than a Lincoln Continental that shared its frame, albeit with a scooch longer wheelbase? Of course not. Same with Cadillac's of the vintage that were no more than Oldsmobile's or Buick's. Throw in the Pontiac Bonneville\Grand Ville and Chevrolet Caprice while you're at it too. What this is then is but mere status symbol of yore. And like first-class cabins on the Titanic, compared to today's road-going gems, it comes up short. Way short. Then again, think about what the poor folks down in steerage had to put up with. 

The Ford Motor Company created Mercury in 1938 to bridge the price gap between Ford and Lincoln and also compete with General Motors and Chrysler's middle priced makes and models. Much like GM and Chrysler came to struggle with their middle children ultimately snuffing all of them out, save for GM's Buick and that's most likely only for the time being, Ford sent Mercury to the great beyond after model year 2010 taking with it with some seventy plus years of struggles to define what made a Mercury a Mercury. Through my foggy goggles, they never really did. 

About the most interesting thing I can find about this fancified LTD is that its 429-cubic inch V-8 has a two-barrel carburetor; the "2V" was for its two-venturi carburetor. The "429 2V" was the only engine available on 1969-1971 Mercury Marquis' and was part of Ford's famed "385" series of Mercury-Edsel-Lincoln engines that it's successor, the 460, incidentally available only with a 4V, was also part of. "385" was derived from the engine's bore of 3.85-inches. 

But wait, there's more. The best is, the 429 2V has a 10.5:1 compression ratio and requires premium juice. No doubt Ford only offered a two-barrel carburetor in the interest of fuel economy. 

Asking price is $2,500. Is that a good price? I guess. Seems fair, not that I care. It's down in Albuquerque, New Mexico.  You might save some pennies driving it home rather than shipping it, but remember, it'll get may 10 or 11-mpg highway, if you're lucky, and it needs to run on the "good stuff". Bonus, if the AC croaks on the haul home, just lower all four-windows for a full-on blast of unrestricted fresh air to cool off. 

Would my contempt for four-door sedans be less if my first car was a powerhouse, V-8 sedan like this rather than the homely, spindly, wobbly, six-cylinder sedan I did have? I honestly don't know. Perhaps it might be somewhat less but then again, back when I came of driving age anyone who was anything, to me at least, drove a car that had only two-doors. The fact my Comet was so intrinsically awful doing the sappy little thing, and through my eyes all four-door cars, no favors.