In a way, I'm surprised that it took FoMoCo until 2011 to shutter the Mercury division. For most of my life it had been struggling to find a real brand identity. I've known Ford fans and Chevy fans, diehard Stans of Pontiac, Cadillac men, and of course the rabid "Mopar or No Car" gang... but I can't recollect ever meeting someone who bled Mercury... Mercury... what color would a loyal Mercury fan bleed if you cut them? Did Mercury even have a specific brand color?
The core of Mercury's lineup always consisted of slightly plusher and more upmarket versions of Ford's sedans. The thing is, by the time you look at the high end of a fully-optioned LTD and the low-end of a base Lincoln Continental, that didn't leave a lot of room for Mercury to run around in.
To pad the lineup of Montereys and Marquises over the years, to stir a little variety into the showroom, as it were, FoMoCo tried various things. For instance, Mercury dealers got to sell various captive imports over the years, like the original Capri and Merkur (née Sierra) from Ford of Europe and the De Tomaso Pantera.
Ford gave Mercury a more well-appointed version of the Mustang, dubbed the Cougar, but it eventually bloated into a more plush-bottomed Thunderbird clone. When the third generation Mustang debuted on the new Fox platform in 1979, Mercury tried the Capri name again, this time as a re-badged 'Stang. They gave up on that after '86, after several years of tepid sales.
Come the 1991 model year, Mercury dealers got a third iteration of the Capri. This time it was a little front wheel drive 2+2 convertible using Mazda 323 mechanicals via the Ford (of Australia) Capri, based on the Ford Laser econobox. Mercury had been selling the Laser-derived Tracer as a subcompact alternative to Ford's Escort, so the new Capri should have fit right in at Mercury dealerships.
The base Capri had Mazda's 1.6L normally-aspirated DOHC 16V inline four, rated at 100 SAE net horsepower. Performance was ho-hum, with Car and Driver recording a 10.0 second zero to sixty time, 113mph top speed, and a decidedly un-sportscarlike 0.79g trip around the skidpad.
There was a sportier XR2 version with a spoiler, ground effects, and a 132hp turbo mill, but even it was no threat to a Miata. Nothing could hide the fact that these were econoboxes with a roofectomy. The same handling that that makes the Tracer/Protege cool is a lot less cool in a car with actual sporting pretensions. The new Capri sank without much of a ripple after the '94 model year.
This one was photographed with a Nikon D700 and 24-85mm f/2.8-4D zoom lens in June of 2020.
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