30-03-2025
The Best Odds: Merkur XR4Ti
From the March/April 2025 issue of Car and Driver.
To our chaotic shores the Big Three have randomly imported Euro-spec cars. Apart from tear gas, little has more reliably induced regret and schadenfreude. Examples abound: (1) an Opel Astra sold here as a Saturn Astra, (2) an Opel Omega as a Cadillac Catera, (3) a Teutonic Ford Sierra as a 1985 Merkur XR4Ti.
Importing the Ford required more balls than are weekly bounced by the Harlem Globetrotters. For starters, no one could pronounce Merkur, including salespeople at about 700 "select" Lincoln-Mercury dealers, many of whom selected to be deselected. Asserted Dearborn: "Merkur is a Greek god; it's 'Mercury' in German; it's a planet; it's the element known as quicksilver." I'm not sure that sales folks right then really needed quicksilver.
As marketing disorders go, it was half Snakes on a Plane, half Chappaquiddick, half mattress fire. The federalization alone ate $50 million on top of the $1.2 billion–plus that Ford spewed to shift Merkurs from Deutschland to Detroit. Along that path, this coupe gained a few hundred pounds via 850 unique North American parts, none buffing performance. In 1989, fewer than 3000 XR4Tis were sold, versus maybe 120,000 Lincoln Town Cars, each netting a Dagwood-delicious sales commission. Town Cars went on display inside, Merkurs outside.
It broke my gin-fumed heart. The car was so delectable that I bought an onyx XR4Ti in Huntington Beach, California. Fully loaded—and I may have been too—it set me back $18,900. It held its own against the BMW 325, the Audi 4000 CS Quattro, and the Saab 9000. Similar handling, a gratifying shifter, a trace of lift-throttle oversteer, and au courant Euro upholstery. Too much body roll, okay, but that made it as comfy as the Saab during freeway slogs. In America, the XR4Ti felt almost exotic. Neighbors asked, "Where'd you find that thing?"
The Merkur's turbocharged SOHC 2.3-liter inline-four promoted 175 horsepower to the rear wheels. It was a tad thrashy at steep revs and as peaky as every other '80s-era turbo. Boost flattened your cheeks at 3000 rpm and faded to emphysema moments later. Never a fan, Jack Roush opined, "It wants a smaller turbo and higher compression."
Out of the XR4Ti's rear deck grew a biplane wing that could dice rutabagas. Half the lower body hid beneath gray plastic cladding. The Euro headlamps tormented oncoming drivers. The shape was an aero ovoid that resembled a geothermal event bulging up through the tarmac.
Among the faithful was Edsel Ford, who persuaded Roush to abandon his rip-roaring Mercury Capris in favor of XR4Tis in SCCA Trans-Am racing.
"Two hundred horsepower a cylinder!" is what Roush briefly summoned while experimenting at his 18 dynos in Livonia, Michigan. "This rascal would hit so hard that it had trouble keeping the flywheel attached." Some other pricey parts too.
Mercury rising? Only if we mean under hood temps, which eventually immolated my own turbo's bearings. Meanwhile, in 1987, Roush secured Merkur's lone Trans-Am title. The sales needle, however, had already rusted in place.
Roush and an outfit called Rapido sold credible aftermarket parts that bumped the street car's output to around 200 horsepower, enabling mid-six-second dashes to 60 mph. For $4500, Roush's Exposure XR4Ti kept its cool via an electric fan, two dozen hood vents, and a two-inch-thicker radiator. For a spell, the Exposure starred as Jackie Stewart's and Bob Bondurant's favorite ride. They owned possibly the only two examples.
If Dearborn's marketing orchestration was 12-note discordant, it went ballistically atonal when the XR4Ti was joined in showrooms by the 1988 Merkur Scorpio sedan. It too was desirable. It too plunged into the commode with force sufficient to crack porcelain. Ford couldn't help but pull the plug—a plug it had never inserted into any known power outlet.
Harvard Business School may yet savor this branding blunder as a teachable moment. The whole misadventure recollected British writer Walter de la Mare. As he lay on his deathbed, his daughter asked what she could get for him. Old Walt croaked, "Too late for fruit, too soon for flowers."
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