10 Mercury cars
With its "skylight dual curve windshield" and "seatomatic" power adjustable seats it offered numerous features, but the futuristic ornamentation was a bit too much even for 50s-era Americans dreaming of the rocket age. At $4,100 for a top-of-the-line convertible the car was way out of reach for most Americans and the brand, formerly a sales success, dropped from 328,000 units in 1956 to just 153,000 for 1958 and few of those were Turnpike Cruisers.
The first-generation Mercury Capri was basically a re-badged German Ford. The initial car was offered underpowered with a 70 HP four-cylinder option and subsequent models would be ruined by Federal standards.
The original Mercury Cougar offered an attractive and unique alternative to the Mustang, with performance on par with the muscle cars of the day. Unfortunately, in 1974 Mercury decided to deviate from being a copy of a Mustang to grow into Thunderbird-like proportions.
The cars look sort of awesome in retrospect, but the market didn't want a two-seat version of the Escort and Lynx that was heavier with worse performance and less usable space. The expensive coupe was shelved in 1983 after approximately 40,000 sales.
Sales were initially reasonable, but the Capri never received a visual upgrade that so benefited the Mustang and carried forward the same essential design from 1979. Sales dropped from 80,000 to just 18,500 in the final year.
The Mercury looks like a cheap sci-fi 80s movie prop, was ironically based on the Mazda 323, and therefore FWD. The Australian-built car was never a hit here.
It was a car for old people who wanted sporty pretensions without any confusing sporty bits like a supercharged engine or manual transmission (which they dropped). We pick on the 1992 model because it represents the 25th anniversary of the Cougar and a real low-point for a car defined by low points.
There are a lot of fans of the 1999 Mercury Cougar — arguable the best looking modern Mercury product. With the Focus dominating the bottom of the range for Ford, the Contour-based FWD Cougar made sense for Mercury and offered a potent enough V6.
The Freestar minivan was the crappy remake of the ungainly redesign of the unreliable Windstar and the Monterrey was based on that. They sold less than 10,000 of the vans in the first year and Ford eventually dropped the model in favor of nothing.
The Milan is the definition of platform prostitution. Rather than differentiate the Mercury midsize from its Fusion and Zephyr platform mates with any worthy improvement they instead pasted a goofy waterfall grille on the front — voila, the CD3 triplet afterbirth. As a replacement for both the Mystique and Sable, the Milan managed to be a disappointment to both buyers. It's also the only other Ford product of the era less attractive than a 2006 Ford Fusion.
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