You Gotta Scratch Mercury Sable Off Of Your List!

Quick, what Mercury model is the most memorable one of all? The Milan Hybrid? Mountaineer SUV? Maybe its the aged full-sized Grand Marquis sedan?

Well, if you’re a guy that answer would be Jill Wagner, the pretty young woman from North Carolina who has been successfully hawking Mercury cars and SUVs over the past few years. Jill has been the main spokeswoman for Mercury since 2005, helping to raise Mercury from obscurity to at least minimum visibility as she ends each commercial with the same statement, “You gotta put Mercury on your list!”

Kiss The Mercury Sable Good-Bye!

Whether people put Mercury on their list or not, the brand will soon be eliminating the Mercury Sable, the twin model to the Ford Taurus (see Sable Reaches end of the line Thursday, The Detroit News).  Like the Taurus — which took the Five Hundred’s spot two years ago — the Sable replaced the Montego, but as the next generation Taurus rolls out in June, Mercury will not be treated to its own version.

The Ford Motor Company has been saying that Mercury will eventually be recast as a small car division, which means that the Mountaineer will be the next model to go followed by the Panther platform Grand Marquis. That latter model, which is a driving museum piece, is probably the worst representation of what Mercury is all about, the antithesis of the youthful Jill Wagner (notice she has never been cast to sell a model that predates her!) Then again, besides the Milan and Mariner, there isn’t any other reason to enter a Mercury showroom unless you’re looking for a Lincoln which is in the middle of its own brand revival.

Will The Next Mercury Come From Ford Europe?

Ford’s plans for Mercury includes adding one small car to it’s line up. Though nothing has been confirmed yet, that car could be one of the six European models heading to North America, perhaps a vehicle that won’t be sold by Ford dealers here.  The Transit Connect, Fiesta and Focus will each be sold as Fords, but the Ford Ka may also make its way across the pond, perhaps badge-engineered as a Mercury.

Ford has been making the three-door hatchback Ka since 1996, rolling out the latest generation of the 1.3L I4 powered city car beginning with the 2008 model year.  That model sits on the Fiat Panda platform which powers the Fiat 500, the same car that Fiat hopes to introduce in the United States through its newly acquired Chrysler, Dodge and Jeep dealer network.

At this point, it is nothing but speculation for what Ford plans to do with Mercury. Right now, Ford is showering new model love on Ford and Lincoln while trying to get a good price for Volvo. This means that Mercury will have to wait, but we’ll probably have Jill Wagner around to sell the Milan and the Mariner and their hybrid variants for the foreseeable future, just what her guy fans want.