Photo: Instagram | Jlord8
The Mercury Grand Marquis first appeared for the 1975 model year, being based on the era’s Lincoln Continental and Ford Country Squire. Multiple body styles comprised the family, including a hardtop, a coupe, a sedan, and a station wagon, and it featured a body-on-frame construction.
Mercury kept refreshing it until early 2011, when they axed it altogether. The final generation Grand Marquis was marketed as a Ford south of the border and was made in Canada. It was essentially the same car beneath the skin as the Ford Crown Victoria and Lincoln Town Car, featured a V8 engine, and was about as spacious as a modern-day BMW 5 Series.
Photo: Mercury
With the auto brand being dead and buried and the Blue Oval being mostly interested in high riders, it is clear we will never see a Mercury sedan ever again. Nonetheless, quite a few of them call Fantasy Land home, including this virtual model that brings the Grand Marquis moniker into the modern era, stretching beyond its usual segment and entering the luxury sedan class.
The reason is that it was based on something that wouldn’t normally have anything to do with this model: the Bentley Flying Spur. The Crewe company’s flagship sedan served as a blank canvas at the hands of Jlord8, who gave it an entirely new face and a few other things here and there, sharing the finished virtual product on social media earlier in the week.
Compared to the Flying Spur, this hypothetical Grand Marquis features a smaller grille and a set of slim LED headlamps, lacks the trim on the front fenders, and rides on different wheels with some concavity. The profile has remained the same, and that includes the lines on the doors and fenders and the side windows, and even the mirrors carry over from the four-door Bentley.
If this rendering feels familiar, then you likely remember the digital illustration signed by the same artist that we covered last fall. That one also used the Bentley Flying Spur as a starting point and featured an almost identical face. The only differences were the Ford logo on the grille, the turbine-shaped alloys, and the fact that it was a digital luxury take on a theoretical new Ford Crown Victoria. So, which one wears the digital attire better?
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