From 1985 to 1989, the Merkur brand was used by Ford Motor Company specifically to target European luxury car shoppers. However, rather than build new vehicles to sell in North America under the Merkur brand, The Blue Oval instead adapted European models for that purpose – in this case, the XR4Ti and Scorpio, which featured some changes designed to enable them to meet U.S. safety regulations. Unfortunately, Merkur didn’t hang around for long, but it seems as if there are still some folks that won’t give up their vehicles, regardless.
According to new data from S&P Global Mobility, there are still 1,477 Merkur models on the road in the U.S., which is impressive given the brand’s low sales volume and short history. Though its vehicles received pretty positive reviews early on, both the Scorpio and XR4Ti ultimately didn’t convince European shoppers to make the switch, though we still see some of these models pop up for sale at collector car auctions from time to time.
Interestingly, Merkur isn’t the only defunct Ford brand that still has quite a few vehicles in operation on U.S. roads, either. In fact, there are still 917,032 Mercury vehicles populating our roadways, even after that brand went away in 2011. As for Lincoln, it accounts for 1,956,551 vehicles, and of that total, 492,355 are no more than five years old, while the remaining 1,464,196 date back further than five years.
Finally, we have the Ford brand itself, which is actually the most common sight on U.S. roads as of the end of Q2, according to this data. There were 42,405,257 Ford vehicles still in operation in U.S. roads – not including the aforementioned sub brands. That’s enough to edge out second- and third-place Chevrolet (38,665,327 vehicles) and Toyota (36,633,813), representing just a touch under 15 percent of the 283,554,192 vehicles currently on the road in the U.S.
We’ll have more on Merkur soon, so be sure and subscribe to Ford Authority for 24/7 Ford news coverage.
With one race left to go in the regular season.
Another nice example of the first-generation model
Just a few years after the last redesign.
Though not by a huge margin.
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The Scorpio was an excellent vehicle - far ahead of other domestically produced Ford products. The problem: they gave it to the Lincoln/Mercury dealers to sell, dealers that could only sell cars to 80 y/o women with blue hair. I tried to lease one but it was such a hassle with the dealer, I wound up getting a Saab 9000. At least the Saab dealer wanted to sell me the car and pointed out its strong features; the Mercury dealer kept bad-mouthing the car and tried to move me to a different Mercury vehicle which I definitely didn't want. Just short of a shouting match with the salesman trying to get a lease set up, I walked out and never went back.
And yet you bought an 86 cougar.