After years of debate, Mercury may finally be heading down the same road as Oldsmobile, Pontiac, and several other old brands. What does this mean? Parent company Ford may have finally decided to focus solely on its bread and butter brand Ford and luxury division Lincoln. Over the years, Mercury has created an extremely loyal following. As such, there will be many customers who are extremely sad to see Mercury go. So won't they just buy a Ford or Lincoln? Great question.

Mercury buyers often would never want to be seen in a Ford, believing it's too down market. Lincoln products are often out of their price range, so Mercury filled that void extremely well. However, these customers may yet still stick with the Ford brand. As Ford continues to move up market with new product such as the Taurus, soon to be former Mercury buyers could be swayed to stick with Ford. In addition, Ford also has no choice but to continue to produce higher quality cars as GM is charging full speed ahead to catch up to number one Toyota in terms of quality and sales figures.

Here's another question: what's going to happen to all of the Mercury dealerships throughout the country? This is a difficult answer because most of these dealerships are joint Lincoln Mercury stores and when Mercury outsold Lincoln last year by a considerable number, these dealerships are going to put up a fight with Ford over their future sales (and future in general). So here's the overall summary: Ford wants to shut down the Mercury division, most Mercury dealerships are together with Lincoln (not Ford) and Mercury's continue to outsell Lincolns every year.

I'd say Ford has a small problem on their hands. So is closing Mercury really a smart idea? Let's first see if Ford makes the decision final and take it from there.