Mercury

When Mercury merged with Ford in 1945, it became Ford’s intermediary brand. Mercury sat between the lower-tier Ford brand and the higher-tier Lincoln brand. In its early years, they focused on large, high-displacement V8 cars to fill the gaps in the Ford/Lincoln lineups. After Ford revisited the Mercury strategy in the late 1950s, they began to reverse the downswing with new full-size models. However, they then introduced the Cougar and Marquis in the later part of the 1960s as an introduction to the muscle segment. The Cyclone was also added to the line in 1964 as a submodel of the Comet.