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!
FoMoCo really missed an opportunity by not making Mercury specifically their performance division. But that would have to have been done as a dedicated effort back in the 60s at the latest.
I’d love to find a 4v 4.6 to swap into my GrandMa if the factory 2v ever shits out.
I think they’re great looking cars, but their price/performance value just wasn’t there.
I remember the Marauder reveal at the Chicago Auto Show, and thought it was incredibly handsome (still do) … and was just reminded that the concept had a supercharged 4.6, which would have livened things up considerably, though then you’re risking that whole driveshaft issue, plus it would have been even more expensive.
I agree with you that the Marauder is a handsome car, still do to this day. I was surprised to read that Mercury decided to charge more just so that they could be competing with higher priced euro sedans. Maybe if they had slapped in the Terminator engine from the Mustang, that would have justified the higher price and had a performance bargain to boot.
As weird as it may sound, when I was in high school, my friends all drove trucks that dad bought them or crown vics (a few old interceptors even). When the marauder came out, we all wanted one. Because we didn’t know any better. But it was mean looking!
They struck out all three times because the cars didn’t have the right combo of performance, luxury, and PRICE. There were other, better choices.
In the case of the most recent Marauder, it failed because it sucked.
It cost a fortune and delivered tepid performance. It was an interesting experiment on the final revision of the Panther platform, but the 32V modular is a yawn factory, and you can’t fix the inherent terrible packaging that includes a low, uncomfortable seating position, enormous drivetrain hump, even worse rear seating position, crap materials, and chassis dynamics that were elevated to “benign and less sloppy.”
Old guys loved them. That four-cam V8 didn’t really get on the power until after 5K tho, and anything above 4500 tends to scare the New Balances off them. Not like it matters on the way to tie up a lawn somewhere with a crying kid doll creepily placed against the bumper.
Polished/chrome wheels? Pass.
That GIANT hunk of engine for just 302 hp? Pass.
So, once again, the Marauder engendered its consistent reaction of “meh, no thanks.”
I loved the 390 FE engine in my 69 Galaxie 500 the car around it sucked.
the 1969 Marauder—god, what were the stylists thinking when they dreamed that up? It looks like it weighs fourteen tons. Who puts wheel skirts on a muscle car?
I never got to drive a 3rd Gen Marauder, but I did get to drive a police package Caprice from that era. Whether the Mercury drove better is for others to speak about.
I will say the Mercury looked three orders of magnitude better. Except for those chromed exhaust pipes. I think it would have looked so much cooler with matte black pipes. And I have to ask did twin pipes do anything performance-wise back then?
I have owned several cars that have had obloid-ish chrome tips that are more than twice the diameter of the pipe that is exhausting out of them. And don’t get me started on the Camery V6 quad pipes, two of which are dead and then visibly different than the two that actually expel gaseous mixtures.
The bigger tips don’t add to the HP but yes dual exhaust can and did help the Panther’s 2V engines get a higher HP rating than the single exhaust versions. For example the single pipe 1992’s were listed as 190hp while the version with twice pipes was rated at 210hp.
That’s a nice bump up for not too much money. I’m not an engineer so I don’t know how some of this stuff works. So bear with me… Are two smaller diameter pipes have any advantage over a single wider pipe with the same capacity? I think most cars with dual exhausts have a single catalytic converter, which would seem to be the pinch point of exhaust on the way out. But again, what do I know.
The Catalytic converter was definitely a reason that dual exhaust availability on V8 cars all but went extinct in the 70’s, Cats were expensive and once you’ve Y’d things together to get it all into a single cat there really isn’t an advantage to having it split into two and it definitely added cost and packaging concerns. That does not mean that mfgs don’t do that and in fact my wife’s 4cyl has dual tailpipes that split after the single muffler.
One larger pipe certainly can flow more than two smaller pipes, if it is enough larger. The only real technical advantage is that the use of an H-pipe in duals can help boost low end torque due to a scavenging effect. On the other hand there is a definite difference in sound on a V8 and that is why it lives on in cars like the Mustang.
Due to emissions demands requiring the cat to be at operating temp as quick as possible many V8s do have two, or 4 cats as close to the manifold as possible and then Y it down to a single muffler after the cats. That is the way the Panthers are with the dual exhaust cars having an H-pipe bolted on to the back of the Cat while the single pipe cars got a Y-pipe bolting on to the same Cats used on the cars with duals.
One other thing the single exhaust cars used the same tail pipe and muffler as used on the R side of the dual exhaust cars.
You obviously know more than I do about this stuff. And it’s appreciated.
I’m pretty sure my V6 Accord only has one cat, but two exhaust outlets and as I said before the stuff for show is bigger than the stuff for flow. As it was in my ex-wife’s X5 and the Acura that replaced it.
That charade is just a more subtle version of the coffee can extensions on F-150s et al.
1998 was when the Panther’s got a new chassis, the first time. That included a completely new rear Watt’s Link rear suspension and larger brakes, that required 16″ wheels, but did carry over the 92 era front suspension. 2003 did bring another new chassis with an entirely new coil over front suspension, a new rear axle moving those shocks outboard. It was the changes to the body that allowed the Marauder as it came to be to exist. Ford insisted that clearance for tire chains exist so all 03 up CVs and GMs got new front fenders, rear quarter panels with revised wheel well openings to accommodate the larger tires.
There are actually 3 different versions of the final Marauder. Like the 92’s the 03’s were an early introduction. Production started in Apr 02 and those cars produced before the traditional MY change over are 300A models, those were only available black on black.
When the Standard MY changeover happened the cars got a number of changes including a lot of changes to the electrical system including ditching the throttle cable for drive by wire. Those are the 300B models and they also introduced options for Silver Birch and Deep Blue Pearl options for the exterior and Grey for the interior. Traction control was also added, while the full (front) sized spare on an aluminum wheel and front seat pockets disappeared to make the bean counters happy.
2004 dropped Deep Blue Pearl and introduced Dark Toreador Red.
Speaking of the Bean Counters, they were a large part of why the Marauder didn’t live up to the Marauding name and couldn’t keep up with the Impala. While many of the parts were pulled from the parts bin there were a lot of unique Marauder items. To save money and offset the cost of those stainless Meg’s tips they had to use the 2″ H-pipe out of the parts bin instead of the larger diameter that Steve specified. That chokes the otherwise free breathing 4v engine.
The other thing that caused some concern with the Bean Counters was the impact on CAFE numbers. So out went the 4.10 gears that Steve had specified and in went the CVPI’s optional 3.55 gears. The reason 4.10’s were originally specified was two fold. The 4v was built for HP at high rpms at the sacrifice of low-end torque. The other thing that impacted the gear ratio choice was the tire sizing. The other Panthers used 225/60-16 tires, while the Marauder’s rear tires are 245/55-18 that are 2″ larger in diameter. That means that the effective ratio is about the same as the standard CVPI and HPP’s 3.23 gear ratio. The bean counters also didn’t like letting the engine rev due to those CAFE fears, which is why the stock transmission programming is pretty much the same as the 2v who’s torque and HP peak at a lower rpm.
So yeah a 3.55 equipped CVPI, LX-Sport, or LS-E will beat a stock Marauder out of the hole.
The other thing that killed it were the dealers. They figured they had a hit and layered on the ADP stickers which only served to keep buyers away and meant that when time came to put in orders for the 04 many dealers still had the one they had glued to the showroom floor with that ADP sticker. That of course meant that at the last minute the 05 with a number of other changes done and ready to send to tooling was axed.
One side effect of the slower than anticipated sales was that they had already placed orders for the Marauder 18″ wheels, so they became the optional wheels for the 05 Mustang V-6 with a slight change in final machining to accept the shallower Mustang center caps.
Yeah I own a Marauder, well actually 2, a 300a and a 300b in the rarest color combo Dark Blue Pearl with Grey which is why when I found one for sale I had to have it, despite already having the 300a. Well that and it included a bunch of the Marauder unique parts and the leather jacket.
None of this is surprising. It’s a study in ruining an opportunity by seeking consensus.
I don’t see how the changes were seeking consensus. They were forced by the desire to cut costs and ensure that there wasn’t a negative effect on regulatory compliance.
Applying a POV from inside The Oval, I can see how this happened within the organization.
Basically one strong voice that couldn’t get enough additional buy-in to avoid watering it down. Cost-efficiency decisions took precedence over making it right for the enthusiast with money. That’s how you get to all sizzle, no steak in this instance. They convinced themselves that it would be good enough and hamstrung the very thing they needed to be excellent.
The Impala SS had the element of surprise. It turned a sow’s ear into a sort of ’90s Grand National phenomenon. It also had a muscular powertrain.
The Marauder packed potential but didn’t deliver. All of the Modular V8s have great-breathing heads, a strong bottom end, etc. But they’re so corked up in the Panther. Instead of something like cast headers, or adapting Mustang tubular headers to the existing exhaust, they gave the thing further emphesyma. And that’s just one example. The chassis work was the best part of it.
A bunch of tiny choices added up to a much less exciting execution than initially promised by the show cars AND the image the car itself projected.
And part of that was the internal consensus-seeking. They needed a yeller to pound on the table a bit more than whatever happened.
It coulda been a 300C before the 300C – which hit the streets with a striking design, an all-new and fairly strong V8, and outstanding presentation.
Instead, we got a Marquis with cop parts. Meh.
Yeah the way Steve presented it back when he used to hang out on the Forum was that he and product planning were yelling loud and pounding on the table, but that the bean counters had final approval. So no there was no consensus and no consensus seeking to be had the way the org worked at the time.
I’ve got a colleague that daily’s a Marauder. Neat car. He isn’t the original owner though, so no jacket!
No jacket? Thats what EBay is for.
“a transmission that short-shifts as though programmed by the EPA”
That’s just a great line.
While the EPA didn’t do the transmission programing, it was changed from what Steve had designed for the car because of the bean counter’s fear of CAFE.
If the transmission shifts in the same way that it does in the grand marquis, which I suspect it does, this line is perfect. When I’m driving around town, it’ll be in 3rd gear before I hit 40 miles an hour, and if I floor it on the highway it waits a solid ten seconds before it decides it’s time to skip from 4th (which is its favorite gear, despite being borderline useless most of the time) all the way to second (which it hates being in). It’s such a surprise every time it does it that I inevitably take my foot off the gas a tiny bit, expecting to stay in second, and it’ll immediately shift into 3rd, then right back to 4th if I’m not careful.
Absolutely diabolical transmission programming, I understand why everyone says you need to do the j-mod on these transmissions.
Regarding the oil pressure gauge that was actually an idiot light because Ford didn’t want to explain to non-car people that oil pressure varies naturally:
Microsoft did a similar move in Windows XP (32-bit) Service Pack 3. I won’t go into the details of 32-bit memory addressing and Windows memory management, but if a user installed 4GB of RAM into a 32-bit XP system, the computer would report 3.5GB. That last half of a GB is used for virtual mapping of various system devices.
The problem was that people were clogging tech support lines to get an explanation. The solution was to have Service Pack 3 report physically installed RAM. Lay people saw the full 4GB reported and tech support went back to explaining to grandma the CDROM was not a cupholder.
Yup Ford had started doing the idiot gauge well before the Marauder came around, but to be fair, they weren’t sporting the Autometer name. On many of the early idiot gauge vehicles you can solder a jumper across the bias resister on the printed circuit film and swap in a sender for an earlier vehicle that had a real gauge. Unfortunately, the Autometer branded gauge was built to be an idiot gauge from the get go so you need to swap the Marauder face onto an aftermarket gauge to make it real or just live with a gauge face that doesn’t match the cluster.
This variance is even more pronounced on motorcycle engines that can have a wider range of operating RPM…from a 600rpm idle to a 12,000+ top end. Lots of motorcycles, particularly sporty, high revving ones, often have effectively no oil pressure at idle, which is fine. The owner’s manual for my Kawi Z1000 even had a note in it that if the oil pressure warning illuminates at “hot idle” it’s of no concern as long as it turns off again revved off idle. I assume this is why I’ve never seen an oil pressure gauge on a motorcycle, it’d make people who don’t understand what’s going on freak out. Ignorance is bliss.
Yamaha’s answer to this from the 70s-00s was all it’s motorcycles had an oil “level” light, not an oil pressure one. Probably the #1 most asked question ad nauseum on the Vmax owner’s forum was “the oil warning light comes on under hard acceleration what’s wrong?”. The answer is the sensor was in the front of the pan and when accelerating all the oil sloshes to the back (the pump/pickup are in the back), so the sensor is momentarily dry and turns the light on. Most other bikes didn’t accelerate as hard as the Vmax and this wasn’t an issue.
Looked at and almost bought a 70 burgundy X-100 with a 429. Really nice car but it wasn’t ‘better’ than my 68 SS 396 Impala. A friend ended up buying the X-100 which was a better highway cruiser than my SS. It, like most big cars of the day got terrible fuel economy.
I never really understood the panther platform Marauders. They were just underwhelming. Of course would you buy a sable over a Taurus. My dad had a friend that had several Grand Marquis he would buy one every 2 or 3 years after they brought out the Marauder he switched to crown vics he felt they ruined the class of it.
I can remember going to a Mercury dealer that was shared with a Toyota dealer around around 03 or 04. No one in there where other places had people and they had previous model year cars they had generally forgotten about in the attached garage. It was a strange enough experience I still remember it. The second gen fusion if mercury survived long enough to get a second gen Milan might have been a good platform for the idea of a marauder.
As a former P71 owner, I’d still buy one of these in a second. They look great. They ride great for long trips. The trunk can hold multiple dead bodies. They’re fun to drive.
Every time I see a Marauder, I’ll start shouting and pointing as my wife screams at me to pay attention to the road. Of course, I do the same for Shay locomotives, but I see them with even less frequency.
The Marauder should’ve had the supercharged Cobra engine as an option.
The engine it got should’ve been standard on the Marq or the Town Car, optional on the CVPI.
They should’ve used the Mustang’s version of the SOHC V8 as the base option. It made 260 hp (vs the CVPI’s 239 or the civilian’s 224hp which is like V6 level LOL)
The base engine should’ve been the Duratec V6, since the 220 hp is about what the retail V8 made anyway
V6 – base CV
260 hp V8 – CVPI and LX/Sport models
302 hp V8 – standard for Marq and TC, optional on CV/CVPI
390 hp V8 – Marauder, optional for TC
“ 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.”
Some things are more important than money.
Back in 2017 I found out a coworker bought a 2003 Marauder brand new and kept it in pristine shape in his garage. I found out about it when he showed up to work one day wearing the leather jacket that came with the car. I finally convinced him to drive it to work, at which point I discovered it only had a few thousand miles on it and was absolutely FLAWLESS inside and out. The car may not have been everything it could have been, but it definitely had presence and had enough power to be a fun boulevard bruiser without getting you into trouble at the first stab of the throttle. Just like the ’94-’96 Impala SS, I’d love to own one.
My brother worked for Kenny Brown Performance back in the day. The Marauder S they produced fixed most of the problems of the stock Marauder, but I think the kit was like $16k more!
Last marauder was let down by the 4speed. Leaving the line it bogs unless you brake-torque it.
Buy an Aviator instead. Get dohc and 5spd auto which is a nice combo.
The larger diameter tires and 3.55 gears were what make it bog off the line not the wide ratio 4R70W version of the old AOD.
Props to the illustrator of the 1966 brochure for those mindbending zebra-on-black reflections! WAAAAY too much work went into that but it’s glorious! Should be the size of a poster, not a coaster.
Why Ford didn’t drop a true high output engine in these things has always confused me, right back to when they came out. Even then, 202 hp was shamefully low. This platform is a true legend, and this car could have been right up there with some of the most legendary muscle cars ever!
Agreed. It really seemed like Ford was going for mostly vibes (as they’d say now) rather than actually producing a muscle car. Was there really that much danger of something like this stealing buyers from the Mustang Cobra if they’d used the same engine?
It is the same engine as the Cobra it was the use of the 2v’s 2″ H-pipe, demanded by the bean counters, which choked the HP down from 320 to 302.
Interesting!
I bought a black 2002 Crown Victoria LX Sport (Sport being basically a trim option) in 2005. It looked 92% like a Marauder. Only the wheels, the grille, and trim items differentiated them outside. Interior was nearly identical as well including the center console. The main difference was the engine was not the 203 HP Cobra. And yes, 2002 was the last model year before the chassis refresh, so some handling differences between that car and any modern Marauder.
I had a chance to drive a 2004 Marauder around 2007 or 2008. It was on a local dealer’s lot. I figured it might be a fun upgrade, but there was around a $6,000 difference to trade up at the time.
The Marauder was definitely more sure footed and noticeably quicker but not impressively so. It wasn’t six kilobucks worth of difference for a car that looked almost like mine including color. It was clear to me that the Marauder might have subjectively had the bad boy looks, but really lacked the oomph. really lacked it. Shamefully so.
I kept my Crown Vic until 2012 and enjoyed it thoroughly. I traded it for an EcoBoost Flex, which was heavier, far more powerful, and quicker than my Crown Vic Sport or any stock Marauder.
The only Marauders that have interested me in the meantime are performance-modified cars that provide what Ford should have.
But oh those wheels on the Crown Vic Sport – they were beautiful and matched the car’s ethos so well.
I did love the wheels on it. I wanted to black out the centers, but that might have been too much. It was a great looking car. I miss it.
It’s funny how a cool set of wheels completely brought out the functional tough of that car, while the Marauder’s chrome-look ones made it look more like a prissy show car.
A neighbor of mine has had one of those for years and it does look amazing, almost like a Marauder. He actually got it when a movie company bought his previous Crown Vic from him for way more than he paid for it.
Yeah the LX-Sport’s wheels are good looking which is why I put them on what is now my son’s Grand Marquis.
That era of early-oughts Ford seems like it had a lot of half-assed efforts. Let’s not forget the T-bird, as well as some of the worst Volvos I can remember. Oh, and the Freestyle (later called Torah Sex?) which was one of the first three-row crossovers before Crossover was a class. A great idea destroyed by a bad transmission and lack of updates. Almost literally the ONLY three-row crossover in the market (along with Pacifica) and they both failed pretty miserably. Weird.
Ford of the early oughts:
So many brands, so little money and attention.
But let us remember the early-oughts Ford Focus manuals.
Despite their missteps, that brief period where European and US Focii were aligned was pretty great.
OK, so it took me more than a few seconds to get the alliteration of Torah Sex. I’m old and Jewish, so give me a break. I was wondering for the briefest time what I missed in Hebrew School besides many lost afternoons of my youth.
It always just stuck out at me as an inherently stupid pun in an objectively stupid car name. And no, you probably weren’t missing anything.