Ford announced on Wednesday that it would phase out its 71-year-old Mercury brand as part of restructuring that will also see an expansion of its luxury Lincoln line-up.
Ford will end production of Mercury vehicles in the fourth quarter of this year “to fully devote” its resources toward “further growing its core Ford brand while enhancing the Lincoln brand,” a company statement said.
Edsel Ford, son of company founder Henry Ford, established Mercury during the Great Depression as a mid-priced alternative to mainstream Ford and upscale Lincoln.
PHOTO: BLOOMBERG
Mercury will now join a host of other Detroit brands that faded away this decade. Last year, General Motors (GM) said it would eliminate Saab, Saturn, Hummer and Pontiac, as it carried out a revamp following bankruptcy. Chrysler, which also filed for bankruptcy last year, dropped the Plymouth brand in 2001.
Mercury sales peaked at about 580,000 units in 1978, reports said.
Its sales fell another 10.7 percent last month to 9,128 units compared with May last year, Ford said on Wednesday in announcing its latest sales data.
Ford said its luxury Lincoln line-up would be expanded with seven “all-new or significantly refreshed vehicles” in the next four years.
“We have made tremendous progress on profitably growing the Ford brand during the past few years. Now, it is time to do the same for Lincoln,” said Mark Fields, Ford’s president of the Americas.
Ford said that its US sales soared 21.9 percent last month from a year earlier, the sixth month in a row its sales have increased more than 20 percent.
The company said total sales rose to 196,912 units from 161,531 units in May last year.
Toyota, reeling from a recall crisis, also saw its sales modestly rise as Americans continue to have faith in cars produced by the Japanese giant.
The best performer last month was Chrysler, posting a 33 percent increase in year-on-year sales about a year after emerging from bankruptcy protection.
GM, which reported last month its first post-bankruptcy quarterly profit in three years on the back of cost-cutting measures, said its sales rose 16.6 percent.
Overall, sales of auto companies in the US rose more than 19 percent last month to 1.1 million units from a year earlier, the seventh straight increase. On a month-on-month basis, auto sales increased 3.8 percent last month to 11.6 million units from 11.2 million units in April.
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