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The Marauder name appealed to the good folk at Mercury, for they chose it for the big Ford engines the company used in the 1960s. Suitably enthused, they also applied the name to some early 1960s fastback versions of the Monterey, Montclair and Park Lane models. And in 1969 they went all the way, launching the Mercury Marauder as a fully-fledged model in its own right.
Blessed was the carmaker who invented a niche market which proved incredibly profitable. In the early 1960s that left Ford smirking, for their Mustang had become the first ponycar. This had involved the creation of a stylish compact capturing the free ‘n’ easy spirit of the age at an affordable price.
Ford’s entry-level luxury marque was missing something, and the wide, long low, well-chromed Mercury Monterey Custom S-55 arrived in mid-1962 to rectify the omission. The general intention was to grab a piece of the action that was developing around sportier models in the early ’60s and the particular task was socking it to the successful Pontiac Grand Prix, which was just such a car.
Edsel Ford created Mercury in 1939, to fill the gap between Ford’s regular models and the company’s Lincoln luxmobiles. The two divisions were merged after World War II to create the Lincoln-Mercury Division, to stress the fact that the Mercury should be seen as a ‘junior Lincoln’ rather than ‘senior Ford’.