Doylestown Auto Repair

Junkyard Gem: 1983 Mercury Grand Marquis LS Brougham Station Wagon

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The pinnacle of the big, slab-sided, rear-wheel-drive Detroit station wagon (preferably with fake wood body paneling) came during the 1970s, when it seemed that every American family had a

Kingswood Estate

or

Coronet Crestwood

or

Country Squire

in the garage (though I grew up then, my family

had a ’73 Chevy Beauville van

instead of a wagon). Such wagons still rolled out of showrooms during the 1980s (though a pair of

oil crises

had taken a bite out of their popularity by that point), and I found a good example of one in a California wrecking yard, royal-sounding name and all.

Junked 1983 Mercury Grand Marquis wagon

The top-of-the-line

Mercury

wagon for 1983 was the sumptuous

Grand Marquis

Colony Park, which started at $10,896. Just below it in prestige came today’s

Junkyard Gem

: the $8,974 Grand Marquis Brougham (that’s about $23,300 in 2019 dollars).

Junked 1983 Mercury Grand Marquis wagon

Wagons sold well enough in the early 1980s that Mercury offered three completely different wagon familes: the

Marquis, Cougar, and Lynx

(the

Cougar

wagon got axed after 1982).

Junked 1983 Mercury Grand Marquis wagon

The regular Marquis had split off from the

Grand

Marquis for 1983, with the former a midsize

car sharing

the

Fox platform

with the

Mustang

and the latter a sibling to the full-size

Ford

LTD

Crown Victoria

(not to be confused with the Ford LTD, which rode on Fox underpinnings).

Junked 1983 Mercury Grand Marquis wagon

The traditional smoker’s vent window seemed crucial when Dad chained unfiltered Pall Malls during family

road trips

, and the Grand Marquis kept this feature until the 1992 redesign. At that point, the station wagon Grand Marquis went away (because wagon shoppers had switched to

Ford Explorers

and the like) and the Grand Marquis stayed sedan-only all the way until Mercury’s demise in 2011.

Junked 1983 Mercury Grand Marquis wagon

The California sun really brutalized the “wood paneling” on this car over the decades, but you can still make out the grain.

Junked 1983 Mercury Grand Marquis wagon

The engine was gone by the time I got to this car, but it would have been a 130-horsepower,

5.0-liter

V8.

I couldn’t find a commercial for the ’83 Grand Marquis, but here’s one showing its Ford-badged counterpart. Just substitute “Lynx, Marquis, and Grand Marquis” for “

Escort

, LTD, and Country Squire” for the cars in this ad and you’ll have it right enough.

from Autoblog http://bit.ly/2PVNzF2