I like my Mercury Villager quite well. Funny thing is, it's not a rebadged Ford, but a rebadged Nissan with extra goodies; kind of the Cadillac of the Nissan Quest.
Never could understand why companies would homogenize their products so much. I've never owned a Saturn, but I always thought it was cool how they were nothing like other GM cars.
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Originally Posted by jamesqf
I think you missed the point I was trying to make, which is that it's not rational to do either speed or fuel economy mods for economic reasons. You do it as a form of recreation, for the fun and for the challenge.
Formula - '96 Firebird Formula/Trans-Am 90 day: 19.31 mpg (US)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ShadeTreeMech
I like my Mercury Villager quite well. Funny thing is, it's not a rebadged Ford, but a rebadged Nissan with extra goodies; kind of the Cadillac of the Nissan Quest.
Never could understand why companies would homogenize their products so much. I've never owned a Saturn, but I always thought it was cool how they were nothing like other GM cars.
L-series was an Opel, and their smaller ones shared drivetrains with a few other GM compacts.
Also, it's cheap to platform share. The days of companies truly competing against each other in their respective groups are gone. GM says "You have this platform, these engines, and this goal", and it goes from there. Back in the day though, there was always great competition with in GM to one-up the other brand. Buick vs. Olds vs. Cadillac, or Pontiac vs. Chevy, as well as GMC Trucks and Chevy trucks (up until the 70s, both has widely different drive train options).
This of course, costs lots of money to develop each brand's unique items.
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"All I know about music is that not many people ever really hear it. [...] But the man who creates the music is hearing something else, is dealing with the roar rising from the void and imposing order on it as it hits the air. What is evoked in him, then, is of another order, more terrible because it has no words, and triumphant, too, for the same reason. And his triumph, when he triumphs, is ours." -Sonny's Blues
It's about time. Say what you will about the dead GM brands, they all had some unique cars and unique versions of each badged engineered car.
Mercs literally just rebadged Ford for decades, since the 80s I think.
That was my thought too, but I'm more in tune with GM rebadging than Ford.
I guess I don't see the extra massive cost of having more brands when just rebadging. Seems like it would be a way to give a wider range of customers what they want with very little added cost.
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mercury was supposed to be a cheaper version of the ford, no rebadging.
Now that ford has been cheap for a long time..why have an even chepaer mercury.
I am disappointed in the crown vic and marquis going away. Thery had one more engineering feat to conquer, and that was half shafts and independent rear. they finally got a strong steering rack in 2003, the p71 car has been welded everywhere all my cars fail like little kids in an adult world...
it is a real shame. My country: almost a winner, then kill yourself.
yeah mercury was supposed to be like Buick, ie the poor mans Cadillac. And there are a few little things on the Villager that set it apart from the quest. It's a shame the quest wasn't a more popular rig, there's a lot of ingenutiy built into it. Of course it weighs in at 2 tons and has a 150 hp 3 L which paled in comparison to the Voyager and the GM minivans of the time; both had more power, less weight, and more recognition. And to be quite honest, the 3 L used in the Villager is a bit old school, and the EPA listed economy isn't all that great; chock it up to a low geared tranny. But it is quite reliable, and the engine has been around in one form or another since the early 80s so if I wanted to I could turbo the thing cheaply using parts from other Nissan VQ30 engines.
One thing I like is that ford insisted on making the oil filter easier to get to and making the engine non-interference in case of a timing belt break. sounds like a great idea to me
__________________ RIP Maxima 1997-2012
Quote:
Originally Posted by jamesqf
I think you missed the point I was trying to make, which is that it's not rational to do either speed or fuel economy mods for economic reasons. You do it as a form of recreation, for the fun and for the challenge.
But they are diverting the money and resources into Lincoln.
Quote:
"Our Ford brand is gaining momentum and winning customers around the world," CEO Alan Mulally said. "Now, we are going to use the same laser focus to further strengthen Lincoln and deliver even more products luxury customers really want and value."
Even if they knew they were going to have to do it, it was probably better for them to wait until now to kill the brand -- if they'd done it last year, they would've been easily lumped in with GM and Chrysler.
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