01
Origins
The Scorpio joined the Merkur experiment in 1987, bringing Ford of Europe's Car of the Year-winning executive hatchback to Lincoln-Mercury showrooms largely unchanged: 2.9-litre V6, rear drive, a vast and comfortable cabin, and hatchback practicality that American luxury buyers found simply baffling. Priced against established German badges without their snob value, and sitting in showrooms beside Town Cars twice its sophistication and half its subtlety, it never found an audience; fewer than 30,000 were sold before Merkur folded in 1989, undone by exchange rates and looming passive-restraint rules that made the business case impossible. The car deserved better — contemporary road tests rated it highly — but the Scorpio proved a lasting lesson: a brand cannot be conjured from a spelling of Mercury that nobody could say aloud.
Merkur Scorpio 2.9 Ghia · ilikewaffles11 · CC BY 2.0
