Mercury MC4

If conventional wisdom was worthwhile, it wouldn't have gotten us into this mess.

I have it on good authority that almost nobody has lusted after a Mercury in the last 20 years. That's what makes this particularly Mercury concept weird: it's enough of a head-turner to make you wonder which IPA Detroit's finest executives had been day drinking to not make this car a reality.

One look at those gullwing-style rear trunk openings next to rear suicide doors and a fastback roofline and you may think I'm being too hand-wavey with just how possible a car like the MC4 was.

Need I remind you: Ford won Le Mans! Ford sells a bazillion vehicles, all over the world, with openings of all shapes and sizes, made with presses and industrial machinery that would be happy to make nearly any structure required.

If anyone wanted Mercury to survive—thrive, even—and move upmarket, there could have been an attempt. Shovelling slow-selling MC4s onto combination Ford-Lincoln-Mercury dealer lots may have been a special kind of hell for the corporate accountants by 2001…but at least those dealer lots would have looked cool.

Many concepts of that era had side view and rear cameras, and 19-inch wheels, and handle-less doors—how weird! How impossible! So futuristic, this MC4, kids like me would say, and then it happened. These things happened, but on Ford F-150s and Mustang Mach-Es and Lincoln Navigators, not on MC4s.

I want my hopes and dreams back, dammit.

(If the groundbreaking concepts of 1997 look like mid-range Chinese EVs in 2026, is it a problem for the future of cars that concepts now look like phone booths?)

Here, you'll be happy to note, it's a Ford MN12 platform underneath, V8 and all, making the MC4 an evolved cousin to the Mercury Cougar XR7, Ford Thunderbird, and Lincoln Mark VIII Coupé.