Mercury Tried To Sell A Big Muscle Car In Three Different Eras And Failed Each Time

For most people, the Mercury Marauder nameplate reminds them of the sinister Panther-bodied muscle car from the mid-2000s. But the late Mercury actually used to be obsessed with slapping the Marauder name on all sorts of engines and then onto two older models. Somehow, Mercury managed to sell a full-size muscle car in three different eras and the car failed to capture a solid audience each time. Here’s why the Marauder was a three-time failure.

The case of Mercury is a weird one. According to Ford, the birth of Mercury happened in the 1930s when engineers began work on a vehicle with more features and styling than any other Ford-branded product. This car was a premium vehicle that was elevated above a common Ford, but not quite on the luxury level of a Lincoln. In 1938, Edsel Ford and Ford Sales Manager Jack Davis decided that the best plan of action would be to launch a brand to slot into the middle between Ford and Lincoln. This brand was destined to compete with mid-range offerings from DeSoto, Dodge, and General Motors.

Mercury was born, and at first, the brand made a lot of sense. Even the name had some real logic to it. Mercury is the winged god of commerce in Roman mythology. Edsel wanted the symbology of “dependability, speed, skill, and eloquence,” to go with this new brand that was selling cars upmarket from Ford. Mercury then went on to enjoy a pretty distinct identity for decades.

Winds of change came in the 1960s when Mercury elevated its luxury and advertised its cars as being “built in the Lincoln Continental tradition.” Later, Mercury became a brand that slung rebadged Fords and almost completely lost its identity. Mercury was cast off into the sea of dead brands in 2011, and in its wake was a history of wins, but also failures.

Jason has written extensively about these cars from the eighth-generation Cougar, which was actually a pretty neat car that’s been forgotten, to the third-generation Capri, a sort of discount take on the Mazda Miata formula. Then there’s the Mercury Eight, a car famed for being the choice of hot-rodders, and the Cougar Eliminator, a hot pony car with class.

The Marauder name shows up plenty of times throughout Mercury history, first as engines and then as trim levels. Then, Mercury tried to sell it as a model. It’s pretty well-known by now that the final Marauder was a sales flop, but as it turns out, the previous attempts didn’t do so hot, either.

The Marauder Was Initially A Bunch Of Engines

Americans got their first glimpse at the Mercury Marauder name in 1958. That year, Ford introduced three new lines of engines, the FE (Ford-Edsel), MEL (Mercury-Edsel-Lincoln), and SD (Super Duty). Yep, decades before there were Super Duty trucks, Ford made big block V8 truck engines adorned with that now-iconic name.

As you can guess from its own name, the MEL was designed to be used in brands that were a bit spicier than Ford. These V8s featured a big block design, wedge-shaped combustion chambers, and replaced the Lincoln Y-block V8 that had been in use since the early 1950s. Mercury branded its high-performance MEL engines as Marauders. As Hagerty notes, there were four engine options that were given the Marauder moniker, including the 430 cubic-inch Super Marauder, which used a triplet of Holley 2300 two-barrel carburetors to hit 400 gross horsepower. That’s a lot of horses in the stable for 1958!

Marauder engines returned from 1959 to 1961 but with much lower power ratings. It wasn’t until 1962 when the Marauder name came back swinging with a new 406 cubic inch V8 good for 385 horsepower with a single four-barrel carburetor or 405 HP when hopped-up on another trio of two-barrel carburetors.

Mercury Caters To Racers

Then came 1963. As Hemmings explains, racing was hot among America’s automakers in the early 1960s, and Ford had decided to shift some resources toward racing efforts. The Lincoln-Mercury division was also given the green light and funding to get into racing. In March 1963, MotorTrend reported that Mercury was going to hit the stock car circuit hard, and leading the charge was racer Bill Stroppe. The publication noted that Mercury’s racing efforts in 1963 weren’t as hardcore as they were in the past, but Mercury believed it had three aces up its sleeve. One was Stroppe’s expertise, and another was the new Marauder 427 V8, which was good for a healthy 410 horses when that article was published.

The third ace was what came halfway through the year. As Car and Driver notes, Mercury had also decided to do something a bit different to attract stock car racers looking for slick cars to send through racing fields. Mercury took the Monterey line, gave it a two-door pillarless fastback roofline, and slapped it with a Marauder name. Perhaps confusingly, Mercury also labeled all of its engines with the Marauder nameplate at this time, too.

Stroppe found out that giving these full-size beasts a fastback roofline was good for an additional 4.5 mph on the track over Mercury’s other rooflines. Stroppe took one of these new bodies, dropped a 406 V8 into it, and hit an average speed of 159.5 mph at Daytona. The Marauder was proven to be a legitimate improvement.

Buyers were able to get their own sporty Marauders based on the Monterey Custom and the Mercury S-55. Six months later, Montclairs and Park Lanes were also able to be configured as Marauders. Sadly, these $3,650 vehicles were slow sellers. In that half model year of 1963.5, it’s believed that only 3,863 units were sold.

The Marauder name would become somewhat diluted not even a year later in 1964 as Marauder permutations now included two-door hardtops, four-door hardtops, notchbacks, and even Mercury’s Breezeway roofline, which featured a reverse-slanted power-opening rear window. Further muddying the waters was the fact that the ’64 Marauder shared V8 power with other Ford products.

As I noted earlier, Mercury then pivoted more toward luxury in 1965. The Marauder was still around as a trim level and wasn’t advertised as heavily. Indeed, take a peek at Mercury’s 1965 brochure, and while Marauder does get a mention, Mercury spends significantly more time talking about Lincoln Continental heritage.

It was only a year later when Mercury gave up on the Marauder model, instead focusing more on luxury vehicles. At least Marauder engines stuck around and continued to get updates.

Race On Sunday, Sell On Monday

The Marauder’s hiatus was brief, as Mercury primed a second-generation just in time for the tail end of the muscle car era. In the mid- to late-1960s, Ford ran a “Total Performance” marketing campaign. As Ford Authority explains, Ford decided to push hard in motorsport, leveraging its racing successes to drive buyers into showrooms to buy hot road-going cars from the company that beat Ferrari at its own game.

The year 1969 was a big one for Ford and Mercury. The Ford Torino Talladega and Mercury Cyclone Spoiler had dominated NASCAR and Mercury just launched a new Marquis. Unfortunately, Mercury didn’t really have a super hot product for exciting racing fans to buy when they walked into showrooms.

In response, Mercury brought back the Marauder and this time, the nameplate would be its own car rather than just a trim level. The 1969 Marauder had a unique fastback body with a front end design and bones borrowed from the two-door Marquis. This was also when Mercury stopped slapping the Marauder name on its engines. Now, there was one Marauder, and it was riding on the muscle car wave of the late 1960s.

The base Marauder featured a 390 cubic inch FE V8, which was good for 265 HP with a two-barrel carburetor. The hot choice was the Marauder X-100, which you were able to get with an optional new 429 cubic inch V8 and either a two-barrel carburetor or a four-barrel. That engine netted you 330 HP and 360 HP, respectively. The 360 HP variation of the mill also made 480 lb-ft of twist at just 2,800 RPM. Of course, this was still the era of gross power, so far fewer ponies actually reached the wheels.

While the Marauder was a whole foot shorter than the Marquis, it was still a big full-size vehicle with a wheelbase of 124 inches and a length a whole 19 feet, or longer than some of today’s camper vans.

The Marauder was never the fastest big boat of this era, but it did have some respectable performance. It dispatched 60 mph in 7.8 seconds, dashed the quarter mile in the mid-15-second range, and raced on to a top speed of 126 mph.

The base Marauder was available with the hot engine, but for an upgrade of just $700, you were able to get the X-100. Spending that $4,074 netted you Kelsey-Hayes wheels, optional lounge or bucket seats, and fender skirts. If you ordered your Marauder with the 390, you could have paired it with a three-speed manual. Sadly, the 429s came only with Ford C6 three-speed automatics.

The Marauder went on to get mostly positive reviews, but Mercury ended up missing the mark. While the Marauder X-100 is arguably one of the coolest Mercurys (Mercuries?) ever, it failed to resonate with the brand’s buyers. Just 14,666 Marauders were sold in 1969, compared to a whopping 121,668 Marquis models. The damage got worse than that in 1970, when Mercury sold less than half of the Marauders it sold in 1969. Mercury stopped the bleeding by killing the Marauder for a second time after the 1970 model year.

It’s not exactly known why Mercury buyers didn’t care about the Marauder. Maybe it was the fact that it wasn’t much hotter than a Ford Galaxie XL, or maybe it was because Mercury had already spent so much time pivoting toward luxury that few people were looking to the brand for performance.

Yet, amazingly, Mercury gave it one last shot.

Third Time’s The Charm?

In 1994, Chevrolet captured lightning in a bottle with its Impala SS. Here was a big American sedan, but draped in black paint, given a stiffened suspension, and harnessed the power of a retuned 5.7-liter V8. The Impala SS made it cool to be bad and the heads at Ford were watching.

Steve Babcock, a manager of Ford’s Crown Victoria and Mercury Grand Marquis program, was inspired by how Chevy moved over 70,000 Impala SS units in just three years. Clearly, there was a market in America for full-size muscle sedans, and Babcock wanted in on it. According to Hagerty, Babcock first pitched the idea to Ford, suggesting it reuse the Marauder name that, at that time, hadn’t been used in a little over two decades.

Ford wasn’t interested, so Mercury took on the project as a way to inject new life into its brand. I will note that Mercury had been going through an identity crisis at this time, as its cars were largely rebadged versions of other products. Why buy a Mercury when a Ford was mostly the same thin,g and a Lincoln was much more? Babcock thought that if Mercury could find a way to relive the muscle car era, then it would have an identity again.

Mercury rolled a Marauder concept out onto the floor at the 1998 SEMA show. Under its hood was a supercharged 32-valve 4.6-liter Ford modular V8, and its body? Well, just like the Impala SS that inspired it, the Marauder concept sported a blacked-out body and flashy wheels. Unfortunately, this concept was timed pretty poorly as the next generation of the Panther platform was under development. So, the Marauder waited until it could have been applied to the newest iteration of the Grand Marquis.

The Mercury Marauder then made an appearance at the 2001 Chicago Auto Show before going into production for the 2003 model year. When the Marauder came out of the cooker, it had taillights borrowed from the Crown Victoria Police Interceptor and smoked to the darkest level they could legally be. It also had blacked-out trim, blacked-out reflectors, and, oh yeah, an oil pressure gauge that lied to drivers. Mercury also gave you a free leather jacket with the purchase of a Marauder. I’m not kidding, you should read Jason’s post on this subject.

The Marauder also got some sweet pipes, cop brakes, cop suspension, and its own name embossed into the rear bumper. The real business happened under the hood, where the 225 HP 4.6-liter V8 was replaced with a 4.6-liter V8 good for 302 HP and 318 lb-ft of torque. The price? $34,495, or about $4,000 more than a Grand Marquis LS Ultimate and about $11,000 more than a base Grand Marquis.

A Mild Rod

Unfortunately, this wasn’t exactly the rebirth of ’60s muscle cars that buyers were looking for. Here’s Car and Driver‘s main review:

Compared with previous Panther platforms, this one is the Rock of Gibraltar—more rigid by half, less prone to body shivers and subassembly squirm. That’s mainly due to a new frame with straight side rails and beefier crossmembers. But some of the credit goes to the Tokico nitrogen, monotube shocks—mounted outboard of the frame rails at the rear—as well as firmer anti-roll-bar bushings in front, less rubbery body-to-frame bushings, rear load-leveling air springs, and front springs lifted from the Vic police cruiser.

All of which works effectively through 18-inch BFG rubber, delivering 0.86 g of grip. On back-country roads, you feel it instantly: The Marauder is firm, flat, stable, composed. Roll control is terrific for a sedan so large, especially useful in 50-to-70-mph sweepers, where the nose takes a set and is prescient about tracing a single, clean arc. On-ramps are a ball.

[…]

At the track, the Marauder acquitted itself satisfactorily, but it is, after all, a 2.14-ton bolus, and it does not produce voluminous thrust at the pushrod-low revs of an Impala SS. With only 1500 miles on the clock, our test car scrabbled to 60 mph in 7.5 seconds (versus 6.5 for the Impala SS, 6.0 for our supercharged Lounge Lizard). It huffed through the quarter-mile in 15.5 seconds at 91 mph (versus 15.0 and 92 for the Impala, 14.6 and 97 for the Lizard). And its top speed—limited to avoid driveshaft vibration—was a wimpy 117 mph (versus 142 for the Impala and 150 for the Lizard). We faced similar vibration woes with our project car, quelling them only via a $698 Winston Cup driveshaft.

While the main review was overall positive, other Car and Driver authors had more scathing takes:

For a car that carries the moniker Marauder (that’s “one who raids, plunders, and pillages”), I expected a little more danger. A little more treachery. And a lot more motor. Despite my best ham-fisted attempts, I couldn’t even get myself into serious trouble. In a car like this, if I can’t scare myself silly, then it doesn’t have enough power. The paucity of low-end grunt is particularly disappointing. There are ready and enthusiastic buyers for such a car. And I wanted to be among them. I wanted to want a traditional rear-drive, V-8 American thumper—especially an all-black one—but this doesn’t do it for me. Maybe the upcoming GTO will. —Daniel Pund

So here it is, a bad-boy Merc conceived to transport me to the days of my youth, i.e., the era of the big-inch V-8. Even better, the thrilling-days-of-yesteryear concept is augmented by contemporary steering, real brakes, and the ability to change course without scraping its door handles on the pavement. So why doesn’t this thing make me want to get out there and maraud? Could it be because I could obtain a BMW 330i, a far better device for motorized marauding, for about the same money? I fit the Marauder demographic, and the driver-license people keep telling me I fit the marauding psychography, but update as they may, this old song ain’t tuneful no more. —Tony Swan

This is Detroit’s second goombata staff car, and the Marauder is many things the Impala SS never was. For example, the Mercury rides and steers better on its updated chassis and has a more deluxe interior with its yards of leather and swabs of metalized plastic. But two things the Marauder isn’t, relative to the Impala—quick or especially comfortable. The Marauder’s flat and formless seats feel like two loaves of damp Wonder bread, and even with its forest of valves, Ford’s modular V-8 simply doesn’t have the low-end beans of the LT1. And it’s not getting any assistance from a transmission that short-shifts as though programmed by the EPA. —Aaron Robinson

Ouch!

Mercury Missed The Mark, Again

Reportedly, Babcock wanted the Marauder to be priced at $29,500. However, dealers suggested to Mercury that a higher price might attract youthful buyers who might otherwise buy a European sports sedan.

Still, Mercury set a modest sales goal of 10,500 units for the 2003 model year, which ran from 2002 through 2003. In reality, Mercury moved only 7,838 units. Mercury made some minor improvements in 2004 to improve low-end torque, only 3,214 examples were sold that year. Once again, Mercury had a dud and the Marauder was killed off for a third time before things got even worse.

You could argue that a lot of things went wrong with the third and final Marauder. Mercury tried to compete with European imports with a car that was nothing like them. The Marauder was also advertised as a modern muscle car when it was barely faster than the standard Grand Marquis it was based on. Then, we have the fact that Mercury charged more for the things, thinking that young people would be into that.

The Marauder was also nearly $7,000 more expensive than the contemporary Chevrolet Impala SS and substantially slower. I mean, it took the Marauder 1.1 seconds longer to hit 60 mph and was also 1.1 seconds slower in the quarter mile, too. In other words, the rear-wheel-drive hot V8 muscle sedan Marauder was slower than a front-wheel-drive sedan with a V6. Oof.

Perhaps that’s why, as Jason wrote, the average age of a Marauder buyer was 51 compared to 69 for the average Grand Marquis buyer. For a second time in a row, Mercury completely missed its target market. From the sounds of it, Mercury missed the competition, too. Even the Chrysler 300C was faster and cheaper.

Sadly, the Marauder is perhaps just another example of how confusing Mercury was at times in its history. Sometimes, Mercury wanted to be a luxury brand. Then it wanted to be a muscle car brand. Then, it wanted to fight the Germans. This is one of those weird times when an automaker kept trying an idea and not quite landing it.

Mercury failed to find a market outside of racers in 1963, failed to find much of a market during the peak of the muscle car era in 1969, and then failed once more in 2003. It’s a shame, too, because if you like Panther bodies, the Marauder is still one of the ultimate factory iterations of the platform. It’s hot, it’s sinister, and it is a little bit faster than the others. You can even find these things for cheap today despite their rarity. The Marauder is actually on my bucket list of cars to drive!