Cars - Mercury Grand Marquis

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	Cars - Mercury Grand Marquis

Overview

The Mercury Grand Marquis is a more upscale version of the Ford Crown Victoria produced by the Ford Motor Company.

The Grand Marquis shares the same platform as the Ford Crown Victoria and Lincoln Town Car. All current Panther-based cars are powered by Ford's 4.6 L SOHC V8 engine, which produces anywhere from 190 to 250 hp (142 to 186 kW) depending on model year and configuration. The only exception was the Mercury Marauder, the Grand Marquis' high performance cousin which was powered by a DOHC version of the 4.6 L engine and produced over 300 hp (224 kW).

Power is carried to the rear end by a 4-speed electronically-controlled, wide-ratio automatic transmission. This transmission is known as the 4R70W, and is the successor to Ford's AOD and AODE transmissions of the early 1990s.

Mercury has always been marketed as a step-up from the Ford brand and has historically been more performance and luxury oriented. There are indications of that in the Grand Marquis. Properly equipped, the large sedan can be both a comfortable semi-luxury sedan while still offering adequate performance.

The Grand Marquis remains quite affordable, priced well below similarly well-equipped entry-level luxury sedans. Prices for the Grand Marquis range from $25,555 to $36,060.

Canadian market

In Canada, after the Mercury brand was phased out in 1999, this car was sold as the Ford Grand Marquis but still remains badged as a Mercury, despite being named a Ford in all Canadian sales literature. Since the demise of the Mercury Marauder in 2004, the Grand Marquis is the last remaining Mercury vehicle sold in Canada. It replaces the Crown Victoria, which is now sold only to fleets in Canada.

Origin

The Grand Marquis's predeccessor, the Mercury Grand Marquis Brougham, was introduced to the American market in 1975 as an upscale package on the fullsize Mercury Marquis. This fullsize sedan shared several exterior design elements with the Lincoln models of the time such as concealed headlights and a Rolls-Royce-type grille topped with a hood ornament. The Marquis was redesigned for 1979 and became based on the Ford Panther platform.

1983

The Mercury Grand Marquis became more distinguished from its more upscale Lincoln cousins and now shared more design elements with the Ford Crown Victoria than with any Lincoln model. The Marquis, like the Ford LTD, split off into a midsize version based on the Ford Fox platform, while the Grand Marquis continued with the Panther platform.

1992

The Grand Marquis was completely redesigned, with its angular shapes replaced by a new aerodynamic body. The new rounded design was then highly regarded for its light weight and low wind resistance characteristics which led to increased fuel efficiency.

1998

In 1998 the Grand Marquis received a minor redesign. Its exterior design became more upscale in appearance, but was more similar to the Crown Victoria's design scheme than ever before.

Reimbursement for Cracking Intake Manifolds, 1996 - 2002

On Dec. 16, 2005 Ford settled a class action suit regarding the widespread failure of the plastic intake manifolds used on 1996 - 2002 V-8 engines. The deadline to make a claim is March 16, 2006. For more details, go to the official site at www.fordmanifoldsettlement.com , or the private site, www.flamingfords.info .

2003

Along with much of the Ford lineup, the Grand Marquis received a subtle facelift with a new grille, a slightly resized chrome bar below the rear taillights, and new interior door panels.

Future

Despite rumors to the contrary, Ford has announced that Mercury will continue to produce the Grand Marquis through at least 2010.

The company does plan on redesigning them sometime in the future, likely retiring the Panther platform altogether and moving them to the Ford D2C platform (used by the Ford Mustang). While Ford would likely replace the Crown Victoria name with something along the lines of Fairlane (or maybe even Galaxie, to go out of Ford's plans to use names that start with the letter "F"), the Grand Marquis name would most likely be shortened back to "Marquis" to go along with Mercury naming their cars with names that begin with the letter "M".

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Mercury Grand Marquis ]

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