Is Ford's (NYSE: F) venerable Mercury nameplate about to join Studebaker, Oldsmobile, and Pontiac in the automotive dust heap? According to a Bloomberg report, Mercury's death may indeed be imminent: Bloomberg's sources say that a proposal to wind down the brand will be presented to Ford's board of directors at its July meeting.
The Mercury brand, created by Edsel Ford in 1939, has been Ford's mid-priced brand for decades, offering somewhat plusher variations of mainstream Ford vehicles that were separate from Ford's upmarket Lincoln nameplate. In practice, the brand served as a way to give standalone Lincoln dealers a full line of cars to sell, just as Chrysler's dealers paired its namesake luxury line with workmanlike Plymouth in decades past. According to Bloomberg, Ford will try to persuade standalone Lincoln-Mercury dealers to close or to merge with existing Ford dealerships. TMF
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