1985 Mercury Cougar Xr-7 Turbo 2.3 Ltr 5 Speed, 16,000 Original Miles! Look!!!!! on 2040-cars

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This Mercury Cyclone is an American Muscle Car in Norway

The picturesque Norwegian countryside certainly doesn't seem like the natural stomping grounds for a 1969 Mercury Cyclone, but owner Alexander Brevik makes the odd combo look like an ideal match. Even with the beautiful surroundings, Brevik sees no need to enjoy the scenery; he'd much rather just be driving this vintage muscle car. Take a ride with him in the latest clip from Petrolicious. Like many of us, Brevik's automotive obsession started at childhood, and today he has amassed a multitude of projects to wrench on. While he loves working on all of these cars, we all need a break sometimes, and that's what the Cyclone is for. Even when the rest of his collection isn't running, this orange beauty is always ready to go. Brevik may not pay much attention to the landscape, but Petrolicious makes the muscle car look fantastic in the Norwegian woods nonetheless. With its rumbling V8 engine and three-speed manual, this Cyclone turns out to be a perfect cruising companion in the Land of the Midnight Sun. And if you just can't get enough of classic muscle cars and the people who love them, check out our video coverage of the 2015 Woodward Dream Cruise in Detroit down below. Related Video:

Report: Last Mercury for retail business built on Sunday

Ford is already well into winding down its Mercury line, and the autoamker has announced that the very last of the soon-to-be dead brand's products built for retail sales was manufactured on Sunday, October 3. The final Mercury Mariner rolled off of the assembly line at the company's Kansas City facility, putting an end to a brand with over 70 years of history behind it.
Even after the Mariner heads off into the automotive sunset, Ford says that it will continue to manufacture a handful of Mercury models for fleet and government service for a while longer, though mum's the word on how long we can expect that practice to continue.
Interestingly enough, according to USA Today, most incentives on Mercury vehicles have all but dried up, even as the brand's August production increased by 120 percent compared to July's figures. Instead of cash on the hood, some areas are offering no-cost maintenance or similar programs. Even so, Mercury has continued to out-sell Lincoln right to the end - besting Ford's luxury arm's sales by nine percent in August.

Junkyard Gem: 1989 Mercury Tracer Four-Door Hatchback

During the life of the Mercury brand, which began in 1939 and ended in 2011, nearly every Mercury sold in North America was a cosmetically enhanced version of some Ford model also sold here. The exceptions to this rule came when Mercury sold Fords originally designed for non-North American markets, and for which no Ford-branded version existed on our shores. The 1991-1994 Capri was such a car, as was the 1999-2002 Cougar (the Mondeo-based Cougar was unique among all Mercuries in that no other cars in the sprawling Ford Empire shared its body). The 1970-1978 Capri was sold through Mercury dealers here, but never had Mercury badging. One of the rarest of all these Mercury cars was the first-generation Tracer, a Mazda design that made its way here via Australia. The bloodline of the Tracer goes back to the Mazda 323, the ancestor of today's Mazda3 and the platform used for all those US-market Ford Escorts of the 1990s. Starting in 1991, the Tracer name went onto badge-engineered Escorts, according to Mercury tradition, but the 1988-1989 Tracers were based on the Australian-market Ford KE Laser. Underneath all of those cars (as well as the early-1990s Capris) lived Mazda 323 running gear, of course. This one nearly made it to the 175,000-mile mark during its time on the road, which is respectable by the standards of 1980s Mazdas. With an automatic transmission transferring the 84 horses from its Mazda B6 engine to the front wheels, this car wouldn't have offered a great deal of driving excitement. 1989 Tracer buyers could choose between a two-door hatchback, a four-door hatchback, and a four-door wagon. Not many Americans hurried over to their local Mercury dealers to buy Tracers, despite the fact that the nearest Ford-badged identical twins were on the other side of the globe. Mercury still seemed relevant in the late 1980s, but its days were numbered. The actress driving the Tracer in this TV commercial seems to have the same deer-in-headlights facial expression of the hapless driver-training students in the 1968 AMC Rebel commercial.