After 18 years of loyal, albeit uneventful service, the Mercury Grand Marquis is going the way of the Kaiser Henry J and the Hupmobile Skylark. Mercury, of course, is also set to go extinct come 2011 following in the footsteps of other well loved but ultimately redundant brands like Plymouth, Oldsmobile and Pontiac. Why Mercury’s headed to the great junkyard in the sky is another blog post, but in a word: badge-engineering. Mercury products were just Fords with different grilles. Customers knew it, non-customers knew it — hell, dogs knew it — and after many years Ford finally copped to this fact.

However, the Grand Marquis, states me, is special. See, back in 2008 Ford made the decision to stop selling the Marquis’ Panther platform mate — the Crown Victoria — to the general public. The huge Ford became fleet-only, meaning unless you are a cop or a cabbie, no huge Dearborn rear-driver for you. Sure, you could still purchase the Lincoln Town Car, but that is another price point, largely stretched and mostly for livery use. Meaning that the Mercury is the last in a very long line of full-size, V-8 rear-wheel drive Blue Oval sedans for the masses.

Realizing all this, on a recent trip to New England my good buddy Murilee Martin and I decided to go Grand one last time. For just $45 more than “Chevrolet Aveo or similar” we rented ourselves an Ultimate Edition Grand Marquis. Mind you, that is not $45 more per day, but $45 more for all four days of our trip. Talk about money well spent. Instead of rubbing shoulders in a beaten up rental automobile edition of a penalty box, the two of us were able to plunk our sizable backsides down in some genuine American near-luxury.

The first leg of our trip was Providence, Rhode Island, to the most southern tip of Maine and a town called Kittery. Why? Lobster rolls! There’s a place called Bob’s Clam Hut that sells some really excellent ones, complete with a soft white roll that can barely contain the dual-mountain of yummy pink crustacean meat. Especially after you slather it up in melted, heart-stopping butter. I recommend the clam chowder, too, as it’s much more about the clams than it is milky white broth.

The Grand Marquis soaked up the 110-mile jaunt with ease. Special kudos go to the fat, leather-wrapped bench seats. Sure, they are split down the middle (as opposed to a single bench) and almost fully adjustable (some lumbar support however, would have been swell), but in an age when even station wagons are getting rigged up with hip-hugging Recaros, it’s refreshing to wiggle about on top of some huge flat benches. After all, we were not planning on getting the Mercury sideways. At least not yet.

Which raises a key point. Unlike the bulk of both pro and civie Crown Vics out there, the Grand Marquis is no Police Interceptor. Even in Ultimate Edition form. Meaning you will not find cop shocks, cop tires, cop brakes, cop engine (well, cop engine oil cooler) or any of the other special parts that grant Police Interceptors to run over curbs at more than 50 mph without flinching. No, our powder blue Grand Marquis was set up like a proper Mercury: real soft.

That fact suited the two of us just fine as we cranked the AM/FM and enjoyed the waft. One gripe is that we had absolutely no way to connect an iPod or a smart phone to the totally Sync-less Merc, and neither of us thought to bring any compact discs. But hey, New Hampshire has some of the most extreme, right wing speak radio in the nation, so we stayed quite entertained. Most importantly, we stayed comfortable, with that kinda-big, almost powerful 4.6-liter V-8 peacefully humming along as if in a dream state.

Our next stop was Stafford, Connecticut, and the renowned (in short track NASCAR circles at any rate) Stafford Motor Speedway, a half-mile bullring of an oval. We’d arrived for that weekend’s 24 Hours of LeMons race. Thing is that motorized circus would not begin until Saturday, this day was Friday and boy that track sure looks empty. Yes, we took the Grand Marquis on the track.

How was it? Shockingly fun. In fact, more fun than the last few supercars I’ve banged around a track. How is this possible? Always remember what P.J. O’Rourke said, “here’s a lot of debate on this subject — about what kind of automobile handles best. Some state a front-engined car; some state a rear-engined car. I state a rented car. Nothing handles better than a rented car.” I experienced no compelling reason to disagree with this thesis. Besides, body-on frame brutes go with ovals like chocolate gets along with peanut butter.

The Mercury also performed one other astonishing feat, one that 99.9 percent of other modern vehicles simply cannot do as well. I went ahead and prepaid for a tank of gas. Meaning that if we returned the Grand Marquis on anything more than an eighth of a tank, they had be getting both my money and my gas! As it happened, Connecticut experienced record-breaking heat that weekend — 100 degrees Fahrenheit and 100 percent humidity. So, we left the automobile idling all day with the A/C set to Max. Whenever any of us felt a heat stroke coming on, we had simply dip into the near-frozen Grand Marquis for a quick cool down. And this may have been the sun talking, but after a few hours I swear the windows began icing up.

While no human being on earth will shed a tear over the demise of say, the Mercury Mariner, many of us will be bummed about the loss of the Grand Marquis. Talk to any car-pundit these days and they will tell you that the future of personal transportation is all about choices. The automotive landscape will soon be a huge potpourri of gasoline, corn-o-line (ethanol), hybrid, plug-in hybrid, range-extended hybrid (think Volt), pure electric, diesel, fuel cell and whatever else gets you from A to B. I just think it’s a shame that one of those choices will not include a graceful old heavyweight like the Mercury Grand Marquis.

Photos by Murilee Martin

More source:

Farewell, Big Prince: Lamenting the end of the Mercury Grand ...
2010 Mercury Grand Marquis Lobster roll – Farewell, Big Prince ...
Mercury Grand Marquis - New 2010 2011 Mercury Grand Marquis Prices ...
Murilee Martin | Facebook

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Submited at Saturday, July 31st, 2010 at 2:00 am on Uncategorized by Ryan
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