As we reported a week ago, and it's official now, Ford's president has announced that it will kill off the Mercury brand at the end of 2010.
For 71 years the brand has seen its good times and, lately, a whole lot of bad times. The only good news out of the closing is that there are no plans to shut down any car dealers because all the Mercury dealers also sell either Fords or Lincolns or both.
The real problem, though, is that almost 300 of the 1,712 Lincoln dealers will be left in markets where the only product they have left to sell probably won't sell enough to keep the dealer's doors open. For those, Ford is saying that it will work with them to either help get them another franchise or to consolidate with another dealer.
The Mercury brand, which was established by Henry Ford's son Edsel during the Great Depression years, now joins Oldsmobile, Pontiac, Saturn, and Plymouth as brands that are no more than ghosts of their former selves.
In a lot of ways, the death of another US auto brand is sad. The US auto industry has learned some tough, hard lessons in the last couple of decades and particularly in the last 18 months. We can only hope that those that survive will concentrate on quality and reliability to earn back the reputation they once had. After all, they are about the only industry the US has left.