When I saw the sales results, I thought maybe the car was out of production.  The Mercury Grand Marquis, down 51.6% from January 2007 sales.  Down 51.6% so far this year.  While some people might turn up their noses at large, rear-wheel-drive cars like the Grand Marq, let’s face it: It is an ideal vehicle for plenty of people who are in the golden years.  And I’m not cracking old here.  The sad thing is that the sales of Mercury vehicles is down.  Way down.  Though not as far as the Grand Marq.  The Sable slipped 17.1% to just 986 vehicles sold in January.  The Milan is down 7.9%.  Things aren’t any better in the truck category for the brand.  Mariner sales are off 11.1% and Mountaineer sales are off 17.9%.  Last January they still had some Monterey minivans in the showroom, of which they sold 175.  That’s 175 they didn’t sell this January.

Fortunately, things were a bit better on the other side of the hyphen.  Lincoln MKZ sales were up 22.8%.  The Town Car, which is down for the count, is down 93.4%.  The MKX crossover is a bright spot, which an increase of 78.1%.  The Navigator, however, was down 6.9% and the Mark LT down 51.4%.

In his official statement regarding the Ford Motor Company sales for January ’08, Jim Farley, group vice president, Marketing and Communications, said that one of the things they’re doing at the company is “accelerating the development of new products people want to buy.”  Which is certainly a laudable goal.  But there’s undoubtedly more to it.  The Ford Edge is the same essential vehicle as the Lincoln MKX; its sales were up 94.9%.  The Mercury Mariner and the Ford Escape are platform mates; Escape sales were up 33.1%.  The Taurus and Sable are the closest of kin; Taurus sales were up 18.5%.

Is it possible that a problem is that the Ford brand is much stronger than the other two, Mercury, in particular?  Given that the company is working hard to right-size itself, it probably needs to give some serious consideration to the viability of the Mercury brand going forward.  While spinning off variants may be a good thing vis-à-vis making the best use of production capacity, if the vehicles aren’t selling, then that is fundamentally a drain on the system, a monetary leak that the Ford Motor Company can ill afford.