Sylvia Back From The Dead

 

That's the gist of this story from the The Mercury News in May 2019.

So what's that got with cars?  Well, despite Mercury being a famous American car brand, absolutely nothing.

Actually, it was this article yesterday from my favourite Aussie car site that piqued my interest - they claim that a Nissan Silvia return is hinted.  And then go on to say why it is unlikely.  They also point at the Top Gear website who say that a new Silvia "could" be on the horizon in this piece and then go on to say that it is "far fetched."

If, and that seems to be a very large "if", it does happen, it will be electric.

That's OK - I believe that it is already possible to create exciting, well-handling and fast electric cars.

I also suspect Nissan wouldn't besmirch a beloved car name by making it an SUV.

It may also be why Nissan's future should be rosier than Ford's.

Capri anyone?

Top Ghia

Two big companies hit the headlines (if you looked at the right sites) this week with announcements about new products.

The motoring press were keen to hear about Ford's new Vignale range which will be a posh-end sub-brand to their standard range. Here's a Mondeo Vignale to be debuted at Frankfurt next week:

It's brown.

 

CarAdvice have the story here while Pistonheads cover it here together with a very cheesy 1980s ad (although it's more like a music video) for Ford RS accessories featuring an Escort from that time.  Just about every motoring site around also has the story with their own take on it - most seem quite negative - especially if you read readers' comments.

 

I can understand why.

 

Ford have always had top-spec cars - usually with the Ghia moniker.  Ghia being an Italian coach-builder/design-house much like Vignale.  In America they used the Mercury brand - until they scrapped it.  Here, they owned Jaguar, Aston-Martin and Volvo - until they sold them all.

 

Ford are suggesting separate facilities within their dealerships for their Vignale customers - that will cost a fair bit and possibly make their existing buyers feel second-rate.

 

Rather than buy a posh Ford, people will just go out and buy a posher brand - BMW being the obvious one.

 

Now, where have I heard that name Vignale before?

 

Ah yes, here:

 

And why Vignale anyway?  Ghia is easier to pronounce.

 

Both have an illustrious history - here are couple of 1950s Abarth Fiats:

 

This is the Vignale. Hmm...

...and this is the Ghia.  The Ghia is moderately less ugly - even with Tweetie-pie's beak.

Of course, Ghia has its own connotations - here's Delboy's "Capri Ghia" as he liked it to be known or "Pratmobile" as Rodney liked it to be known: 

Some of the motoring press are saying that if this actually works, then the sporty Ford-buyer will be offered a sporty sub-brand - the ST - which just brings us back to the RS brand in the Pistonheads video.

 

Now, the other company with a proud, important pre-launch is Samsung.  They seem to like the name Ford is rejecting so let's just hope that there is no confusion between the Ford Galaxy Ghia... 

and the Samsung Galaxy Gear... 

The Mayor of St.Edmundsbury is a Buffoon

Maybe it's a hacked self-driving car.

After my comment at the weekend about self-driving cars ending up in Sainsburys, we now have a car in Tescos.  It was driven there by the local mayor.  Nobody was injured.

I found this story today in The Sudbury Mercury - everyone's favourite Suffolk-newspaper-named-after-an-American-car.

So, does this Mayor's buffoonery match that of the mayors of London and Paris I have previously highlighted?

I don't know.  The story tells of a trip to hospital so it could have been a medical condition caused this.

But I suspect not.

Lots of Mercurys and other American cars end up in buildings due to clumsy or forgetful drivers forgetting how Automatics work:

Pictures like these regularly turn up on news websites.

All nations are affected but most ot these seem to be American due to the high car-ownership over there and the high proportion of those that have Auto-boxes.

I particularly like the third picture.  Claim, anyone?


Now, the mayor from our story, Terry Buckle,  may have just been unlucky.  The story says that "It is believed the car had lurched forward from a parking bay directly in front of the shop, with Mr Buckle at the wheel."

Pesky cars, eh?

Maybe it was a medical condition though - he was stopped in a disabled bay after all.

I put his registration number into mycarcheck.com and, surprise, surprise! - it's an Automatic.

So, it does look like buffoonery - or an excuse to get a mayoral car that's a bit posher than an S-Reg Vectra.



Post Script - Terry is blaming his brakes! Ha!

Fox Speculate On Killing President

Killing Lincoln to be precise - This is a car blog after all.While I'm sure Fox News will continue to character-assassinate President Obama, this story of theirs today is about Ford possibly killing Lincoln. This is on the back of earlier this year when they (and then I) reported about a Lincoln MKZ show-car literally smoking and back in 2010 when Ford announced the end Mercury.

All that Jim Farley, Ford's group vice president of marketing and sales would say is "Stay tuned!"

Now President Lincoln was killed in Ford's Theatre while President Kennedy was killed in a Lincoln. See the Ford link? But then again, President Ford survived his own presidency and lived a very long life afterwards.

Quite a fusion of coincidences to focus on there.

Hot New Lincoln

Literally.Well it looks nice enough - but not enough to using words like "Hot".

This is the new concept car, the MKZ, from Lincoln. Lincoln being the only posh brand owned by Ford since they said bye-bye to Mercury. And it looks like Lincoln are being allowed to produce their own designs and products rather than just re-badging existing Ford ones.

I found this car report on the Fox News site:

Now, I can't stand Fox News - or anything really with Murdoch's grubby paws on it - but I was curious as to what they were making of the current Republican primaries with their favourite Tea-Party-friendly candidates being beaten by Romney who they wouldn't want to be slagging off too much just in case. That was when I found that report and was soon bored watching it by the little Australian man using lots of management-speak.

I didn't think too much more about it until a day or two later when I read this report in Autoguide.

Here's the video:

Well that just takes the biscuit - the Lincoln Biscuit.

The Mercury is Falling

The Ford Motor Company have announced that this Fall, sorry, this Autumn, the Mercury name will be no more. This name may not mean a lot to people on this side of The Pond but it will be sadly missed by me. As you will note from the photograph above, I have owned a couple of Mercurys in my time - and in the 1970s, they seemed a lot more exciting than the European cars of the time: Vauxhall Viva anybody? VW Variant?

The one on the right used to be green and it has two dogs in the back. The one in the middle was a Fire Chief's car and the one on the left was an ambulance - all, unfortunately, have seen better days and are now serving time in the care of my sons.

That was a time when Mercurys were real, exciting-looking cars in their own right.

The Mercury name today is used as a luxury brand name for the ordinary Ford range. Sort of like Vanden Plas was for British Leyland as opposed to how Lexus is for Toyota. There are no specific Mercurys, just rebadged, poshed-up Fords. This meant that they could not sell off the whole brand like they did with Aston Martin, Land-Rover, Jaguar and Volvo. They could just sell the name, I suppose - but I doubt if they will.

So farewell, Mercury, Another One Bites The Dust.
(See what I did there - Freddie Mercury - Queen - good, eh?)