Today’s Nice Price or Crack Pipe Mercury has one of the longest names ever bestowed, and befitting that name the car is pretty long too. Let’s see if its low miles and sweet shape make you long for it at its current price.
You may not remember all the way back to last Thursday and Christmas Eve, after likely having gone on an eggnog bender, stolen Santa’s sleigh - or maybe it was a cop car, all you know is that red lights were involved - and then discovering that the true meaning of Christmas is indeed in giving - a breathalyzer test.
However, should none of that have actually occurred then you might in fact recall our 1999 Ford Windstar with a BMW diesel. It will come as little surprise for those who do remember that the voting was heavily NOT in that weird custom’s favor, coming in at a decidedly un-cheery 84% Crack Pipe loss.
The Windstar was one of the dull nails Ford drove into the coffin of their traditional full-size wagon products. Minivans, and SUVs, with their taller and more park-able forms made the freight train-sized full sized wagons seem suddenly ungainly and unfashionably unfashionable. In fact, this 1990 Mercury Grand Marquis Colony Park represents from the second to last year for the marque - which originated in 1957 - and for Ford’s big wagons as well.
I guess you could consider Ford’s Flex and its Lincoln MKT sister to still be big wagons although the company itself classifies them as ‘Crossovers,’ which if you’ve seen the movie Poltergeist isn’t something you’d want to have happen to you.
No, if you want a FoMoCo product that’s a wagon worth the braggin’ then your choices are limited to something older like this Colony Park or its Country Squire siblings. This one’s even nice enough that you may not want to look any further.
First off, this Colony Park is brown. Glorious root beer, metallic poop, nutmeg in your latte brown, with an equally brownalicious interior. That paint seems to be in excellent shape as does the 3M vinyl woodgrain wrapping it from stem to stern and all the way around the tail gate.
Speaking of tailgate, here’s one way that big wagons are better than Minivans (Chevy Astro Dutch Doors excepted) and SUVs: the Magic Doorgate. The tailgate on this Colony Park will open both down and out, whatever your predilection. And behind that, sideways-facing seats! Suck on that, SUVs!
In front of those are acres of bench seats, and those all look to be as cosseting and inviting as god’s own BarcaLounger. You get a lot of old school luxury items here too, things like a wide horizontal speedometer, classy door pulls and opera lamps on the B-pillars. There’s also power everything and everything is said in the ad to work.
It’s also said to only have 111,000 miles on the clock and comes with an EFI-equipped 302-cid Windsor V8. Making use of that engine’s 150-bhp is a four-speed AOD automatic. This was the standard drivetrain for 1990.
Despite its significant presence, this is actually a downsized model in the Marquis line, and quite remarkably, it tips the scales at only about two tons. That’s down substantially from previous generations and even less than the current Flex, although to be fair the Flex has a lot more stuff on it.
You don’t need that stuff, right? Things like side airbags, antilock brakes, navigation system, or multiple moonroofs? In that case, you might also like this classic wagon’s lighter than a Flex price.
The dealer presently in possession of this remarkably clean machine is asking $4,995. Now, there are cheaper ones out there - like this older one found by CaptainSlower - but I think you’d be hard-pressed to find one in quite this nice of shape.
What’s your take on that shape and its $4,995 asking price? Does that seem like a reason to circle the wagon? Or, is this a Colony Park priced like a Central Park View?
You decide!
Raleigh NC Craigslist, or go here if the ad disappears.
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