Mercury Marauder

Mercury does not build many cars like the Mercury Marauder: a 2-door hardtop / 4-door hardtop with Ford FE engine#390, built from 1963 to 2004 in the decade that gave the world the pony car and the mid-engined supercar.

The background

The Mercury Marauder is an automobile nameplate that was used for three distinct full-size cars produced by the Mercury division of Ford Motor Company. Deriving its name from the most powerful engines available to the Mercury line, the Marauder was marketed as the highest-performance version of the full-size product range. Introduced as a 19631⁄2 model line for its first production run, the Mercury Marauder was distinguished by its sloped roofline (shared with the Ford Galaxie). The nameplate was a sub-model of the three Mercury model lines (Monterey, Monterey Custom, and S-55). For the 1966 model year, the Marauder was replaced by the S-55 as a stand-alone model line, making it the Mercury counterpart of the Ford Galaxie 500 XL version.

The Marauder model name returned as a fastback-like version of the Mercury Marquis for the 1969 model year. It was positioned as a personal luxury car between the Mercury Cougar and Continental Mark III. Following the 1970 model year, the Marauder model was discontinued. The Mercury Marauder nameplate was revived for the 2003 model year as a high-performance variant of the full-size Grand Marquis using the Ford Panther platform. After lower-than-expected sales, the Marauder was discontinued at the end of the 2004 model year. The Mercury Marauder became the last rear-wheel drive sedan introduced by Ford Motor Company in North America.

The engineering

Under the skin sits Ford FE engine#390; other versions carried different engines, listed in the specification table below. The gearbox is a 3-speed manual / 4-speed manual / 3-speed automatic. The layout matters: a front engine drives the rear wheels, the classic proportion — long bonnet, cabin set back — that most people picture when they picture a sports saloon or a grand tourer. These are manufacturer figures carried by Wikipedia and Wikidata, not road-test measurements.

Where it sits

Where it sits in Mercury's history is not in doubt: it was built at Main plant. On a showroom list of its day it stood against the Buick Riviera, the Pontiac GTO, the Maserati Quattroporte. Its Mercury stablemates include the Mercury Bobcat and the Mercury Capri.

The money

There is no federal ownership record for the Mercury Marauder — it predates the complaint database or was never sold in the United States — so MotorJury publishes no running-cost figure for it. For a car of this age the price is set by the collector market and the condition of the individual example, not by a formula.