2002 Mercury Mountaineer Vin 4m2zu86e92uj12489 Paint Color
The new Mercury Marauder takes its name from the big Mercury beef cars of the 1960s, but its accurate airy ancestors are two atramentous Mercury sedans that starred with Jack Lord in the long-running television alternation Hawaii Five-O. Lord portrayed the granite-jawed Steve McGarrett, arch of Hawaii’s aristocratic Five-O badge unit, his address cop-show tough, his beard a absolute North Shore wave, his car no accepted police-issue Ford Custom 500 or LTD but a big atramentous Mercury in which he stormed about Oahu.
“Steve McGarrett’s car is as abundant a appearance in the alternation as any of the people.” So claims Karen Rhodes in Booking Hawaii Five-O, the best and as far as we know, the abandoned bookish album on the cop show. “The big, atramentous Mercury sets a accent of ability and intimidation,” she continues. “Steve is . . . boxy and aggressive on his own, but the atramentous Mercury adds a added ambit of strength, alike a adverse darkness, to McGarrett.” That’s some appealing absorbing assignment for a ’68 Park Lane and, later, a ’74 Marquis, either of which, off-screen, ability accept been apprenticed by your grandfather.
Twenty-two years afterwards McGarrett screeched his big atramentous auto to a stop for the aftermost time, Mercury has served up a apparatus altogether ill-fitted to the marque’s best telegenic enthusiast. The Marauder is a badass cop car with some aloft attitude.
The reborn Marauder aboriginal appeared not in Honolulu but in Las Vegas, as a abstraction car at the 1998 SEMA show. Considering what populates the afar of aisles at SEMA–wildly active Honda Civics with hyperkinetic acrylic jobs, airtight SUVs on huge chrome wheels, bikini-clad babes acclamation shock absorbers–Mercury’s Grand Marquis in Darth Vader accouter garnered a hasty bulk of attention.
Now that it’s here, the absolute affair looks about identical to that concept, with atramentous paint, a blacked-out grille, best of the chrome trim removed, foglamps, and straight-spoked chrome auto (eighteen-inchers all around, compared with the appearance car’s seventeens up advanced and eighteens at the rear). The big auto abrasion BFGoodrich g-Force T/A tires, admeasurement 235/WR50-18 in advanced and 245/WR55-18 in back.
Inside, in abode of the Grand Marquis’s bank advanced seat, we acquisition buckets, a centermost console, and a attic about-face for the four-speed automatic. The driver’s bench is adequate abundant for an all-night stakeout, but back you’re on the move, the active position suffers for abridgement of a asleep pedal.
In an accessible nod to hot rodders, the animate houses Auto Meter oil burden and voltmeter gauges; their white faces are echoed in the birr gauges (which accommodate a tach). Aluminum-look accents alter the Grand Marquis’s wood, and the upholstery is a abstaining gray leather. One back-to-the-’60s blow is the Mercury-head logo (from the Roman agent of the gods) arresting in the seatbacks; it’s additionally in the caster centers.
Come this fall, the autogenous will be absurd up some more, with a two-tone gray blush scheme, acrimonious seats, and a sunroof. Traction ascendancy and a additional exoteric color, aphotic blue, additionally will be added.
The assembly Marauder differs from the abstraction car beneath the hood. The Vegas appearance car featured a supercharged, SOHC, 4.6-liter V-8 with an adamant block, two valves per cylinder, and an advertised achievement of 335 application and 355 pound-feet of torque. The assembly car does after the blower and instead employs a DOHC, 32-valve adaptation of the 4.6 with an aluminum block and heads. Roush Achievement helped out forth the way, conspicuously in the development of a new assimilation assorted and the bifold bankrupt system. The net aftereffect is 302 application (at 5750 rpm) and 318 pound-feet of torque (at 4300 rpm). That avalanche abbreviate of the abstraction Marauder’s supercharged agent but calmly betters the Grand Marquis’s top V-8, which can aggregation abandoned 235 application and 275 pound-feet of torque.
To accord with the greater grunt, the four-speed automated is beefed up, and the rear arbor is bargain to 3.55:1 from the Grand Marquis‘s 3.27:1 for faster takeoffs. Still, the big Merc doesn’t absolutely bound abroad from a stop, and anyone assured a muscle-car-style annoy smoke affectation will be disappointed. Once it’s rolling, though, the Marauder gets up and moves, scrambling to 60 mph in aloof over seven seconds. We recorded a quarter-mile time of 15.6 abnormal at 94 mph, which is admirable but not intimidating. Put it this way: If some Honolulu corrupt were beat in a mid-’90s Chevy Impala SS, our man McGarrett would accept to await on his active accomplishment and his adamant will to bolt him, as the achievement of the two cars is about identical.
On the added hand, it would booty abandoned one tire-squealing bend for the Five-O arch to apprehend that this new Mercury is a accomplished altered kettle of poi from the hubcap-shedding understeerers he collection for a dozen years. The Marauder is additionally awfully bigger against the Grand Marquis we’re accustomed with, mostly because of the all-encompassing anatomy makeover that Ford lavished aloft all its big rear-wheel-drive sedans for 2003, and partly because of some appropriate tweaks for the Marauder alone.
Like its siblings, the big Merc allowances from a stiffened frame, with hydroformed advanced rails; variable-ratio, speed-sensitive rack-and-pinion council in abode of recirculating-ball; a redesigned control-arm advanced suspension; a beefier advanced anti-roll bar; and monotube dampers all around, with the rears relocated alfresco the anatomy rails. Compared with the Grand Marquis, the Marauder sits a few millimeters lower in advanced on beneath police-spec springs but rides a bit college at the rear with its taller-sidewalled rear tires. The Marauder’s rear air springs (taken from the Lincoln Town Car) affection amount leveling, which should accumulate the car from boring its base alike with a block abounding of shotguns, bullhorns, and beard spray.
This car’s rack-and-pinion council is far added absolute than the recirculating-ball arrangement in aftermost year’s Grand Marquis, and, of course, it’s leagues bigger than the Marauder’s Five-O-era forebears. A different ability council addition ambit gives the Marauder abundantly aerial council efforts that body naturally. Bend this big Merc into a corner, and it will absolutely about-face in, but added absorbing is the application with which the g-Force T/As adhere on. The repositioned rear dampers go a continued way against taming arbor hop over aflutter corners. Although understeer is still the adjustment of the day, we were able to punch in a little ability oversteer on the glossy ambit corners of mist-shrouded Round Hill Drive, aloft Honolulu.
The Marauder borrows its vented rear disc brakes from the Town Car, and, like all of Ford’s big ’03 sedans, it additionally employs cyberbanking anchor force distribution, which makes the accepted anti-lock braking arrangement beneath acceptable to be alleged aloft during adamantine stops in advanced of Five-O head-quarters–or anyplace else, for that matter.
The Marauder may accept accustomed too backward for McGarrett, which is too bad because it’s absolutely his affectionate of car. It’s not a afire beef car, but it is acceptable fun for anyone with an acknowledgment of V-8-powered, rear-wheel-drive American iron, alike if they weren’t angled by boundless examination of ’70s cop shows at an affectable age. Now, alibi us while we crank up artisan Morton Stevens’s iconic Hawaii Five-O affair music. Aloha.
