2005 Mercury Mountaineer Base on 2040-cars

Auto blog

NHTSA investigating 725k Ford, Mercury vehicles for stalling issue

Owners of Ford Escape, Mercury Mariner, Ford Fusion and Mercury Milan models, listen up. According to a report on Automotive News, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has opened an investigation into these four vehicles totaling an estimated 725,000 units. The investigation appears to center around a malfunctioning throttle body on non-hybrid models of the 2005-2012 Escape and 2011-2012 Fusion. With Mercury dying off after the 2011 model year, this probe will also apply to the 2005 through 2011 Mariner and the 2011 Milan. There has been some discussion around the Escape stalling issue for some time now, but this investigation appears to be larger in scope than before.
Though not a recall yet, NHTSA's Office of Defects Investigation (ODI) has received 123 complaints of stalling or surging vehicles, while Ford itself has logged 1,472 complaints. The investigation report, which is posted below, seems to indicate that a faulty circuit board for the throttle body could cause the vehicle to go into limp mode, which, according to NHTSA, could cause complaints of both stalling and surging.

Junkyard Gem: 1972 Mercury Cougar XR-7

Starting with the 1939 model year and continuing through 2011, the rule in Dearborn was that most Ford models would get a dressed-up sibling wearing Mercury badges (and Canadians even got Mercury F-100s and Econolines). When the Mustang first hit showrooms in 1964, the countdown for a Mercurized version began. That car, the Cougar, debuted as a 1967 model marketed as "the man's car." Today's Junkyard Gem is a much-abused example of the early-1970s Cougar, found in a San Francisco Bay Area car graveyard a while back. Just as the Mustang packed on weight and price as the 1960s became the 1970s, the even more heavily gingerbreaded Cougar did the same. For 1971 through 1973, the Cougar was still based on the Mustang chassis but weighed several hundred additional pounds and was more than seven inches longer. The curb weight for this car was 3,298 pounds, versus 2,941 pounds for the lightest '72 Mustang coupe. Yes, there's a Mustang underneath all that chrome! When the Mustang went to a modified Pinto chassis starting in the 1974 model year, the Cougar moved over to the midsize Torino platform and stayed there until it rejoined the Mustang on the Fox platform for 1980 (though the honor of being the Mustang's near-twin went to the Mercury Capri at that point). For 1989, the Cougar became an MN12 Thunderbird sibling, where it remained through its 30th anniversary … and then the Cougar got the axe. The Cougar story wasn't done at that point, however, because the name got revived in 1999 with a Mondeo-based version that lasted through 2002 and bears the distinction of being one of the few Mercury models with no corresponding Ford-badged counterpart. Along the way, there were Cougar sedans and even station wagons, with the curb weight of the heaviest-ever Cougar bloating to well over two tons (the winner of that honor is the 1977 Cougar Villager wagon, scaling in at an astounding 4,482 pounds). In 1972, though, all new Cougars were coupes or convertibles, and all of them came with factory V8 power. The build tag on this one tells us that it was assembled at the River Rouge compound in Dearborn and sold via the Kansas City sales office. That tells us that someone drove this car to California after buying it in the Midwest; Ford also built 1972 Cougars in San Jose, so California Mercury shoppers would have bought locally-produced ones. It's a top-end XR-7 in Medium Bright Yellow paint, with the interior in Medium Ginger.

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.