Someone wake up grandpa and give him the news: Mercury's not going away. The Detroit News reports on Ford's decision to keep the seemingly pointless exercise in badge engineering running at capacity. Some of the reasons seem dubious, like the Grand Marquis's high profit margins (since it hasn't been redesigned in years), and that the Mountaineer gets more lessees than the Ford Explorer does, though the "too expensive to shut down" argument appears to be the big one. Still, some financial analysts think Mercury should go, hot spokesmodel and all.

The gods must love Mercury [The Detroit News]

Related:
Mercury's Spokesmodel Outed: Jill Wagner in the Blogosphere [internal]

Contact information for this author is not available.