In 2006, when I worked for a Ford/Mercury/Saleen dealership, one of my clients was a young man from Texas who had recently finished a stint in the military and ended up following his heart to Minnesota to start a life with the woman he was going to marry. He brought with him an immaculate 2003 flare side Ford F-150 super cab in white with a black pinstripe, spray in bed liner, soft truxedo bed cover, low miles, and rear wheel drive. He was looking to get into a family sedan but didn’t want the typical front wheel drive set up.
One of my client’s jobs while he served in the Armed Forces was to function as a chauffer (I’m sure there’s a military term for this, but I don’t know it) for Generals and other high ranking military figures. He had been trained in evasive, defensive, and offensive driving maneuvers to safely transport the officials, and would carry out these tasks behind the wheel of a Mercury Grand Marquis. A Grand Marquis is essentially a Ford Crown Victoria with a little bit nicer trim… or as my dad always says: “A Mercury is a Ford with the bolts tightened.” My family sedan shopper wanted a rear wheel drive sedan that could handle the driving techniques he had been trained to do, though hopefully he wouldn’t need to employ any of those maneuvers while shuttling the family to and fro.
I was kicking myself as I tried to find a car compatible with my guy’s list of demands, because not too long before he had found his way into the seat across the desk from mine in my little office, I had the perfect car sitting in our lot. I don’t know where it came from, but one day when I came back from a day off, there was a Dark Pearl Blue 2004 Mercury Marauder parked in the used section of the lot. The first time I spotted it, I made a dash inside to snatch up the keys and take it for a spin only to discover that my friend J.T. had already pocketed the keys and had designs on testing the car’s mettle himself. Since we were buddies, he agreed to share, and off we went on our back-roads testing circuit in the Marauder.
For those who may not know what the Marauder is, here we go: A Mercury Marauder was originally a 1960’s model high performance sedan. The name was revived a couple times, with the most recent revival being in 2003-2004, for a production run of right around 10,000 cars offered in Black, Silver Birch, Dark Pearl Blue, or Toreador Red. These cars were on the surface a Grand Marquis, but differed in a few ways. First, all the bright work on the car (stuff that would have been chrome-like in finish like the grill) was body colored or matte black, and its badges were still Mercury badges, but featured the god-head in profile Mercury emblem . Inside trim featured satin aluminum finishes, and the speedometer from the Crown Victoria Police interceptor. Under its hood sat a 4.6L dual overhead cam V8 tuned for 302HP and 318 lb ft of torque that would broadcast its revving anthem via dual exhausts jutting out the back end. For a full sized sedan, these things looked wicked fast, and drove that way, too.
J.T. and I had our fun in the Marauder. We put it through its paces, but never beat it up… after all, we had to sell that thing. Unfortunately, neither of us did sell it. An internet buyer swooped in and picked it up, giving the sale to a friend who handled internet sales named Raina. So, back to square one for me. I wanted to put the deal together for my client, and frankly, I wanted his truck in our lot. It was a beautiful and well cared for machine with a great balance of power and options that I knew I could find a buyer for.
I lamented the loss of the Marauder, and cursed the internet for stealing it out from under me, but then a little silver sparkle caught my eye. It just so happened that I had overlooked a silver 2005 Lincoln LS sport that was parked in the used inventory section. -The LS was offered from 2000-2006, so you can only get a used one these days. Sure, it wasn’t as big as the Marauder. In fact, it was 5” slimmer width-wise, 18” shorter in length, about 2” shorter in height, and about 475 pounds lighter. But, a Lincoln LS is a rear wheel drive sedan, and the one we had was a sport tuned V8, so it had some abilities. I just didn’t know if my client would want it.
I decided to see if the idea would fly and began to sing the praises of the LS to my client. Sure, the 3.9L V8 in the LS was only good for 280HP as opposed to the 302 of the Marauder, but there was less weight for those horses to haul around too. The LS was the sport version and came equipped with a sport tuned suspension, so you could almost throw its weight around like you would with a Mustang. It shared a platform with two other cars of its day: the Jaguar S-type, and the retro-slick Ford Thunderbird, and the one I had for sale was loaded up with all kinds of great goodies inside.
As it turned out, I could have saved myself a lot of that effort, because my customer had been eyeballing that very LS. He was thrilled by the idea of taking it on, but worried that it might be out of his league, so he hadn’t thought he should dare to bring it up. My dealership owned that Lincoln for an amount that gave me some flexibility, and we’d had it on the lot for about a month, so I thought we could make it work. We went for a test drive, and my customer loved it, though I was disappointed he didn’t demonstrate any of his super secret military driving maneuvers for me.
We put together a deal that gave him a pretty good amount of trade allowance for his truck, which worried me a bit, because it seemed like it might not leave much meat on the bone for reselling the F150 -but we did it anyway. My Lincoln buyer was pretty happy and seemed to think that if he stuck around, I might change my mind about the deal, so he signed over and left his truck without bothering to roll back the bed cover to clean out the 3 big bags of aluminum cans he had been meaning to take in for recycling before he got sidelined with car shopping. Off he sped off in his LS.
After he left, I tagged the F150 flare side I had just taken in, and parked it in the fresh trade row behind the dealership so the used inventory manager could come through later in the week and see if he wanted to pull it for the lot or send it off to auction. A couple days later, I was walking laps of the lot on a slow day and happened to run into a middle aged couple who were cruising the lot, looking at trucks. They didn’t want to buy new, and didn’t need anything really heavy duty. The guy wanted a truck to haul around his little boat, and the gal figured she could also use it in her gardening hobby. They didn’t seem to find anything that struck their fancy and were about to leave when I remembered the flare side I’d just taken in. I advised them to drive over to the back lot and take a look what we had and get back to me if they liked anything they saw. They drove off, and I hadn’t even completed my next lap before they came roaring back to find me. They wanted to take the flare side F150 for a test drive. I warned them that it hadn’t been detailed or even properly inventoried yet, though it was a very clean truck to begin with. I had them wait at my office while I trotted off to grab the keys.
Luckily, I checked the bed of the truck and spotted the bags of recycling before I brought it around for my new customers to drive (I didn’t want them to have to listen to a bunch of cans clinking around in the bed on their test drive). I dragged the bags over to where I had my Mustang parked and, for lack of any better place to put them, crammed them into my own car, where they took up the entire back seat and the front passenger seat. Then I brought the truck around for the couple to take out for a spin. They very much liked it, and wanted to buy it that day. The guy kept commenting on what a nice looking rig it was, and his wife seemed to be in agreement, whereas she had pooh-poohed some of the other trucks in our used inventory, stating that she didn‘t like the thought of her friends seeing her behind the wheel of this truck or that one. I knew exactly what we owned it for and was able to negotiate a cash deal that was fair to them but also made it worth my while. Then I pestered the guys in the detailing shop to push my flare side to the front of their workload for the day so I could get my customers into their new truck without making them have to wait around for hours.
I saw my guy who bought the LS a few days later. He drove into the lot and flagged me down asking where his truck had gone. He was loving his new Lincoln, but thought he would swing by to say hello to his dear old truck while he was in the area. I told him his truck hadn’t spent much time at all in the limbo of the fresh trade row before finding a new home, and that seemed to brighten his day.
…And so, there you have it: a tale from the fresh trade row that has a happy ending for all: a sport tuned Lincoln LS for one guy, a pretty little truck for the couple, and two sales for me.
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