A little while back, I wrote about a wonderful ’81 Pontiac Bonneville Brougham that Cindy and I had received from her grandparents; Louis and Molly. Cindy’s grandparents were such wonderful people; Louis loved his wife and cherished every minute they had together, while Molly was a typical sweet grandmother who never complained.
The day came when Paul, my father in law, knew it was time to take his father‘s car keys away. Louis‘ driving had gotten unsafe and it was the best thing for everybody involved. The only thing was that at the time, the car was in the hands of Paul’s sister. However, that was not what Louis had in mind at all, he told Paul to take the car back and give it to Cindy and me as he wanted us to have his last car. It was just his wish. What a kind man.
The car: a 1985 small Mercury Marquis Brougham. It was a sort of ginger color over tan with a chocolate brown interior. Mercury had been running a promotion where they ordered this model loaded with power windows/ locks and seats, V6 engines, tilt wheel, cruise control, etc.
When I first drove the car, I didn’t realize how poorly it had been treated in the little bit of time that Paul’s sister had driven it. She had never checked the oil (which showed nothing on the dipstick), the headliner was falling down, the air-conditioning wasn’t working, and she handed me a month’s old letter about a factory recall (No memory of what about). I believe that when we got it the car had maybe 14,000 miles on it, and was only 5 years old.
First stop was the LM dealer who conducted said recall, changed the oil, replaced the air filter, and rotated the tires. When I picked the car up, there was a note written by the mechanic who had done the work. It simply said: “This vehicle has a serious drivability issue that we cannot track down.”
Next we had the A/C fixed and finally the headliner.
Being used to large cars, the Mercury was a breath of fresh air. Though I didn’t realize this until later, I had been brought up on “the bigger is better” marketing. However, the ’85 Mercury showed me that this was not the case. You could have a nice riding car that would hold 5 people in comfort and their luggage while not wasting space. And when it ran properly, it was a really nice driving, solid-feeling car. I mean, John Davis and the staff at Motorweek even praised it.
The only thing Cindy and I really didn’t care for on the car was the design of the steering wheel. I never had a use for that framed look. Also, the car had a 3-speed automatic and did about 20mpg on the road, which didn’t really impress me too much.
…..
The drivability issue that the dealer mentioned became more pronounced about a year later. Sometimes the Essex V6 felt spirited, others it felt like I was dragging an anchor. Sometimes there would be a slight vibration. So I took it to a local friend who was a mechanic under a shade tree!
He suggested that the torque converter was beginning to fail. So he and I replaced that, and the vibration left the building.
About a year later, the car began to run hot (I added gauges to supplement the “cutting-edge” Ford design of having one idiot light to indicate either overheating or dangerously low oil pressure). Then oil burning joined the group –about a quart every 650-700 miles. Cindy and I decided that this car with only 18,000 miles deserved to be looked at by a true shop.
True enough, after running compression tests all around we were told the engine would need to be rebuilt. The mechanic felt that it had been abused and probably ran without oil on different occasions. Who knows, Louis was not all there anymore when his keys were taken, and we saw firsthand how Paul’s sister had treated the car.
We agreed to have him rebuild the engine, and asked him to check the rear end for oil and to change the transmission fluid and filter. All told, it was $1900!
When we got the car back, it ran very nicely. No rocketship, but it was smoother. So we took a road trip from Davie Florida to Charlotte. While on the trip, overheating reared its ugly head. So the LM dealer replaced the intake gasket (there had been known issues about that intake leaking, and they did the work for the cost of labor) and we were back on the road.
From the time we got home, things went downhill very fast. It started out with being very hard to start from time to time. Then Cindy told me that every time she made a left turn the car would just shut off. The gas mileage started to fall off again, and it was time to take it back to my mechanic.
His advice was to get rid of it. He told me that I had put so much into it that if it wasn’t any better than what we had put into it, it was probably time to let it go.
By the time we got rid of the car, it had 22,000 miles and this would’ve been in 1994. I sold the car to a gentleman called Charlie for $2595 and I told him that I had had work done to it, but that he needed to understand he was buying it “as is”. No problem, he was excited to have a car, since his had been totaled and he had been out shopping for a while.
Mercury Marquis image from the Cohort by canadiancatgreen.
Charlie, the new owner, came by my store after about two months to check in. No surprise, since he was a regular customer at my hardware store.
He told me that while on his way back from Lake Okeechobee after a good day of fishing, the Mercury threw a rod or three. He said it just started clanging very loudly, then it just coasted to a stop. He made a deal though –he traded the car for the cost of the towing bill!
Related CC reading:
Ford is capable of building dependable cars.
But they refuse to do so.
From the clip on fuel and A/C lines, to the dual disc transmission, warped rotors, heater cores made of gum wrappers, it’s like somebody there is working for GM.
Could be nepotism, DEI, or simply decisions made by accountants.
Could be the UAW.
My own 86 wagon had very high miles for its age (5-6 years old and > 100k) and was the opposite of your car in almost every way. It always started and ran great. After later experiencing the Ford AOD transmission, the 3-speed C5 was a delight to drive. But yes, the fuel mileage was not impressive. And my headliner fell down too.
The more I read here, it seems like Ford of the 80s became like Chrysler of the late 60s-early 70s in that the good ones were really good and the bad ones were really bad.