When was the last time you saw one of these? This pristine 1988 Merkur XR4Ti was found and posted to the CC Cohort by Constantine Hannaher. It looks brand new and has obviously been well-cared for by its owner(s) – the current owner even has “XR4” vanity plates. Something about the location and line of Mercedes-Benz Sprinters in the background make the Merkur look like it just arrived new off the boat from Germany (albeit 25 years late).
I like these cars a lot, if anything for their rarity and uniqueness. The front end is my favorite styling feature. The headlights and lack of traditional grille make it look modern, yet definitively ’80s. Unlike many captive imports, Ford actually gave Merkur its own logo. Things get a little weird around back with the double rear windows, but overall I think it succeeds in making the hatchback roofline look sportier.
1988 XR4Tis received a simpler spoiler, replacing the two-tiered one for previous years. I think it gives it a more simple, Euro elegant look instead of rallye-ready like the ’85-’87s. Sadly, for a number of reasons (more details here) Merkur and the XR4Ti didn’t catch on. Regardless, I think they were good-looking and interesting little cars. If I had the money and space to collect cars, a Merkur XR4Ti like this would easily be one of the first ones I’d get. I’ll take mine in red please!
BTW, in case you don’t know German, the title translated means “Imported from Cologne”. It’s a play on Chrysler’s “Imported from Detroit”, as Cologne, Germany is where Ford of Europe’s headquarters is located.
I was rather smitten with these, and the Scorpio, back when they were new. Finding one even then happened about as frequently as seeing hen’s teeth.
The brand name always confounded me. Yes, it was supposed to be pronounced “Mur-core” but it always given as “Merker”, as in a play on Mercury. And we all know how much cache Mercury always seemed to have.
Never seen a Merkur plenty of Ford Sierras though they were quite common in NZ. This was the world corporate look for Ford that the Taurus copied to look like a modern car when it was released.
Plenty Ford XR4s about in the UK when new.They had a strange bi plane double deck rear spoiler.Beware if buying one that it is the real McCoy,there are plenty Sexton Blakes about.I had the plain vanilla 2 litre hatchback for 2 years,ultra reliable but eventually it succumbed to terminal rust
My boss in the mid-90s had an ’85 XR4ti with the biplane spoiler and an automatic. He loved the car, even though it was pretty trouble-prone. He planned to keep it forever. Apparently “forever” came in 1996 when he replaced it with an Impala SS.
These never really did it for me, especially with the much cheaper Mustang GT available. Then there was that name. Xr4Ti? Alphanumeric names taken to a ridiculous extreme. And don’t get me started on Merkur.
The 5.0 V8 Mustang made short work of the turbo four Fords. Whether it was the XR4Ti or the Mustang SVO, the much cheaper V8 car performed better in a straight line and wasn’t that much worse in the corners or in fuel mileage. It also made its power in a smoother manner without all the sturm und drang of the complex turbo four cylinder cars.
The only thing that might have saved the turbos is if there had been big fuel price hikes in the eighties. When that didn’t happen, their days were numbered.
The turbos were raced with much success something the pathetic Mustang was incapable of, straight line fast is useless in the real world.
Of course, that’s why the Merkur was such a success. People hate cheap reliable cars that can beat fancy expensive European cars to the next stoplight or passing on the highway. The kind of performance and value the Mustang offered wasn’t useful at all in the US.
/s
Well, as Jim notes, the XR badge made sense to European buyers; American customers just didn’t have any context for it. I assume the reason Ford didn’t call the XR4 a Sierra in the U.S. market was that they would have had objections from Oldsmobile (which already had the Cutlass Ciera).
…as well as GMC, which was using Sierra for its full-sized pickup.
I love the looks of both the Merkur XR4Ti and the Scorpio. As a matter of fact I just saw 2 XR4Ti’s (the 85-87 models with the double spoiler setup on the rear) and two Scorpio’s in the local junk yard.
In fact I snagged the badging from one of the XR4Ti’s. The badge Says MERKUR inside the middle superimposed on a cross with Ford Werke A.G. and Koln(with an umlaut over the O in Koln) , Germany
I think Ford did a very disservice to the Merkur XR4Ti by badging it as a Mercury as the only thing Mercury sold well in those days were Grand Marquis and Sables. They should have badged the XR4Ti as a Ford and sold it in the same price bracket as the later Probe and they might have sold more then they did at as a mercury
I never cared for the jelly-mould Sierra with its’ pseudo modern appearance, and the XR4 didn’t do it for me either. It was supposed to be the “halo” car of the range, but then the Sierra Cosworth came along and blew it out of the water.
I do have a weakness for red cars though…..
These were initially very appealing to me at the time, but a lady co-worker had one back in 1991 – it was the most unreliable car in the parking lot. Her problems were eventually solved when the car caught fire one day.
Great and extremely rare find! Even when they were new, these were few and far between. How many were actually sold in the US?
Also: was the Merkur name supposed to be a play on Mercury? Sort of like a German Mercury?
“Merkur” isn’t a play on Mercury. It IS the word “Mercury,” translated into German.
OK, thanks for clearing that up. I guess I could have Google Translated it!
The model name was sort of a carryover from the Euro Sierra. They had the Fiesta XR2, the Escort XR3 and the Sierra XR4i. The XR series was their sports line, kind of like we had the Escort GT and Mustang GT. Over here they then also added the T for Turbo to make XR4Ti. So it makes sense if you are familiar with the history but not for anyone else (i.e. the average person walking into the Mercury dealership). These were relatively common in California as was the Scorpio at the time. (Well, much less common than Mustang GT’s but more than the Mustang SVO,both natural internal competitors). They still look fairly modern.
The automatics over also had much less power than the manuals as the transmission could not handle it, which is not so say that they had THAT much power.
Going way off-topic, the South African market saw an XR8 (same thing with V8 power) and obviously in Europe there were the Cosworth versions, which were originally homologation specials to qualify for Touring Car racing (just like the BMW E30 M3 and MB 190E2.3-16)
Good luck getting an XR8 Jim,most had a short and brutal life on the race track or were wrapped around a tree.I think Bryce or another of our New Zealand CCers found one for sale earlier this year
Yes, ’twas me found one for sale here in NZ. NZ$35K.
The front head rests from the Merkur are reputedly a drop in fit for the vanagon headrests. The Merkur rests have an adjustable tilt not found on the vanagon rests.
As always, ready to insert some sort of vanagon reference 🙂
Alistair
Nom nom nom, looks delicious in red! I won’t repeat the comments I made on the earlier Merkur CC (linked to in the article above), but long story short I learned to drive in my parents’ Sierra in the late 1980s, and went on to own three myself up until 2001 – no coupes though. I loved Sierras, and they still look good today (such a lovely big glass area!). A gorgeous XR4i (must have the biplane spoiler) is high on my cars-to-own bucket list – I keep eying up the NZ-new ’84 below that’s for sale here: http://www.trademe.co.nz/motors/used-cars/ford/sierra/auction-637443634.htm
I always got the feeling that Ford imported these things because gearheads and buff-rags were constantly screaming for Eurocars in those days. Problem was emission standards were so different in both markets it was prohibitively expensive to certify them. Hence the turbo 4, a rough thing indeed. The moral of the story is not enough gearheads or buff-rags actually plopped their cash on the hood to make these cars profitable in North America.
These cars were not cheap and like previous posters noted, a Mustang LX 5.0 was a screaming deal compared to this complex, expensive Eurocar.
This was an early indication of an absolute internet autoblog truth: The louder and longer a blogger is willing to scream about a certain car, or class of cars, being available in the states . . . . . . the less likely he’s actually willing to spend his own money and BUY one, new. You could probably graph it and get an almost perfect inverse proportion.
In the early 2000’s, a fellow engineer and friend of mine had a white XR4Ti which was re-powered with a supercharged Ford 3.8 V6 from an MN12 Thunderbird. He had a fetish for these cars, and because he wanted to build the baddest one ever, the 3.8 he sourced was a Coy Miller prepped racing engine good for about 450 Hp (or so I was told). The transmission (a 6 speed manual) was sourced from a Corvette. I had the pleasure of driving it once and it was scary quick. Not long lived though, as it was built for the drag strip and the engine inevitably died on the track. All told, he had more than $20k tied up in the drive train alone in that car when it dropped a valve. Last I heard, it was still sitting in a garage with the heads off.
The thing I liked about his car was that he bought a European front clip for it with glass headlights (that didn’t yellow-up like the US spec lights). It really cleans the look up on one of these.
Sounds like my dad’s friend John’s mid engined, fully MoPar prepped, Neon SRT4 which just needs the electrics sorted out to get running.
From what I’ve read, the Sierra got off to a slow start in Europe (or at least Britain) which in turn led to Ford converting only one line for the Taurus with another still building Fox LTDs- which led to a scramble to convert the second line when the Taurus was a hit!
Given that Americans had had since the ’82 T-Bird (also a hit) to get used to the look, I wonder if Ford Europe would’ve been better off launching the Sierra as a 3-door XR only, to replace the Capri while the Taunus/Cortina lived on another year or so as 5-door and wagon Sierras were folded in from the top of the line down…
But really, Ford should’ve done one fully modern, FWD car in this size segment for the ’80s rather than dissipating their efforts through the Sierra for Europe (which was still a rear-drive early ’70s Cortina under the skin), the half-baked Tempo for America (mechanically a stretched Escort) and rebadged Mazda 626s for Australia and Asia.
I really really love these things despite being bittin by a rabid xr4ti of the 88 breed. I bought mine in 97 and it had 110k km and ran and was exellent. Even though I performed a compression test and a leakdown test with the ppi. about two months after I bought it, it became driveway art. The 2.3 melted the skirts on three pistons and a hole in the fourth. After a complete rebuild using quality bits and with performance in mind I was excited to get it back and determined to treat it nice during the break in period I had my mechanic install a manual boost controller so I could turn it way down untill the engine was broke in. Well 37 or 47 km in the head gasket blew. Since the head was plained as was the block we where stumped and put it up to a bad head gasket(felpro tripple layer) and replaced it and tried again. Well maybe 50km in the head gasket went again. Again it was replaced with a better gasket (dont remember the brand) and checked the head and block to make sure they where true and they where. Another 25 km and it happened again, this time totally frustrated and sour it abandoned it in my driveway and looked for another car. Four months later I was moving to white rock and couldnt have a wreck in the driveway so I sent it to the junkyard and never looked at another merkur again.
That double side window- was it homage to the opera windows on Mercurys of the Brougham Epoch?
The Sierra’s rear side windows were inspired by the Porsche 928.
And the Ford Sierra RS Cosworth was the real McCoy.
One thing that must be said about the Sierra/XR4Ti’s styling; unlike the E30 3-series it was pitched against in the US, the Merkur actually HAD some style!
When these came out fell in love with it. And was pissed that we did not get a dumbed down version of the Cosworth engine. Another Ford bait and switch.