Finding a Mercury Grand Marquis in Florida requires minimal effort. Run some errands and at least two or three will drift into your lane, obliviously back into your path, roll diagonally across parking lots, and otherwise engage in irrational actions that threaten your fenders and test your brakes. These quintessential retiremobiles remind drivers of a certain age of glory days before cars became rounded blobs and tech-laden tin cans. This 1987 Mercury Grand Marquis Colony Park GS in Ocoee, Florida shows evidence of care along with some damage attributable to its sun-drenched latitude. Check out more pictures and a stream-of-consciousness description of this massive Mercury here on eBay. It awaits the oddly specific $2997.40 opening bid.
You could pile options into your Grand Marquis and its Ford Motor Company stablemate Crown Victoria. This upmarket Mercury offers tilt steering, cruise control, air conditioning, power windows, and more. Credit the seller for showing the cracked dash pad instead of covering it with a cheap mat. Let us know in the comments below if you think the “believed” 21,933 total miles might be 121,933.
Turbine wheels, a stand-up hood ornament, wood grain, opera lights, and generous trim grant this wagon a luxury look, though white wall tires would more appropriately complete the scene. If your tribe fills up the cavernous enclosed cargo hold, simply lash your aerodynamic and weatherproof belongings to the roof.
Fox body Mustang fans will spot familiar parts here, most notably the port fuel-injected 5.0L (302 cid) V8 making 150 HP and 270 lb-ft of torque (160/280 with towing package). The plenum intake helps build that torque, and the Colony Park could tow up to 5000 lb. Speaking of pounds, this 4000 lb mega-wagon weighs only about one teenager more than a 2024 Mustang GT. Thanks to lov2xlr8 for its library of factory brochures. After a backpack sprayer load of shiny spray, the engine compartment looks better than most of this vintage. Few powertrains would be easier and cheaper to keep alive, and single-computer engines from this era represent the pinnacle of simple reliable engine management. Would you consider daily driving this well-equipped ’80s people-mover?
Fun write-up Todd. This wagon would be a worthy participant at Cars & Coffee, where it would generate those entertaining “we had one of these, only it was….” conversations. Plus you could use it for those Home Depot runs. Looks pretty good, but I agree, it begs for whitewalls.
I wish the selling dealer would not have been absent in middle school when the subject in English class that day was “how to write in paragraphs.”
Careful, others have been castrated for suggesting grammatical shortfalls.
Oh, and to the author, no matter what the vast majority of people say. There’s no such thing as a “Fox body” anything. That’s a GM thing like Positraction.
Yup. I’m gonna die on this hill!
This wagon might be a winner, though I would guess that it has milage turned over. It’s in Florida at a used dealer specializing in Chevelles. I see that someone has bid but yet to meet reserve. I also see the tail pipe that has fallen down from the “wire” hanger beside it. I have had three of these similar 5-liter products, an 85 Grand Marquis, 86 and 87 Town Cars. I think they’re good engines, but I replaced the water pumps on each, a tedious if not expensive task. The AOD trans gives decent milage on the highway. Should be inspected and they welcome third party inspections.
I would guess, looking at this station wagon, that the odometer has been around once — it isn’t “cherry” enough for 21,000 original miles. I own a 1988 Mercury Grand Marquis with 388,000 miles — so, these beasts can LAST. But mine does NOT have a cracked/split dash-cover. Since mine is grey, though, that wouldn’t work anyway. As high as mine’s mileage is, the interior still looks very nice. But the old girl is getting tired now. If this one truly WERE a very low mileage survivor, I would be tempted. As for the whitewalls: they are ridiculously expensive now, compared against the rather “blah” blackwalls — unless someone else knows something I don’t. If the white walls were within about 15%-20% of the black walls, I would HAVE them. But at upwards of $1,200.00 for a set of four, NO WAY! I might not be in Florida, but I AM one of those senior drivers you so cavalierly describe in terms of fender-scratching/denting threats in parking-lots — and I have YET to scrape against any thing or any one, thank you much!
Hello Harrison. Thanks for your comment and defying my unfair (tongue-in-cheek) stereotypes. Your tenure with one vehicle suggests you are a good citizen and a credit to the reputation of Grand Marquis and Crown Vic drivers everywhere. Happy Motoring!
Travelstar and Uniroyal Tiger Paw II whitewall tires are about $130 each. That’s nowhere near $1,200 for four of them.
$2,997.40 is what it has cost in fuel since it rolled off the dealer lot.
To 8banger: you might be RIGHT!
Harrison, given the recent snowfall in the south, even you might be tempted to buy this car and drive back to Upstate NY! I know you don’t like warm weather. No, best to have someone check this over first, I guess for a fee? The hanging tail pipe may be an issue of neglect.
It’s $14,987 on their website.
I guess this will be another EBay no sale.
Hello to Todd Fitch! I must thank you for your response, as well as cautioning you that I am Autistic. The latter means that I miss subtleties such as sarcasm, irony, and things said tongue-in-cheek; hence I also fail to catch many jokes as well. We Autists are very literal and direct creatures, and “nuance” is lost upon us. While we can be very intelligent, our social sense is easily surpassed by that of your four-year-old — or even your dog or cat. So, please forgive me if I take your words for exactly what they directly mean, and fail to grasp the sense of “play” behind them. This is why we on the Spectrum (of Autism) have difficulty with tact also: we cannot distinguish it from dishonesty. We also (those of us who are verbal, that is) can communicate ONLY verbally; since body-language and any but the most obvious of facial expressions are lost to us. Because we are virtually incapable of intuition, many mistakenly believe that we have no empathy. That is not true! What we lack, are the tools to realise what you are feeling — UNLESS YOU PUT IT INTO WORDS SO WE KNOW WHAT IS THERE. And most neurotypicals (those who are not Autistic, to us Autists) seem singularly reluctant to share feelings IN WORDS — hence, we do not sense them. It is not from lack of concern or caring, it comes from our lack of perception. If you TELL us what is going on, we are VERY understanding and empathetic (unlike, let’s say, a sociopath who genuinely lacks either the conscience or the capacity to care for others, or the narcissist who views orhers, simply, as a means to inflate his own fragile ego). The problem for your Autistic friend is, he CAN’T PERCEIVE your feelings, unless you VERBALISE them, and even maybe explain in words until he can catch-on This is why we can be the clods you DON’T want around you, because we talk too much, or we talk out-of-turn, or we say things that have no relation to what has just been going on. We aren’t “jerks” — we genuinely DON’T KNOW what is going on. We speak as a way of reaching-out to relate — because we’d LIKE to have friends. And because we often LOOK “normal” and SEEM “perfectly intelligent”, you cannot be blamed for not seeing our struggle against a handicap that doesn’t overtly SHOW. And so you naturally lose patience with us, and life for us can get solitary quickly, then stay that way. This is why I appreciate a site such as this, where everyone needs to use words, and whether or not I look you in the eye as you would expect, never comes into play. Thus, except for irony and sarcasm, and saying just the opposite of what you mean, simply to be “funny”, someone Autistic, such as myself, can interact on an even playing field, here; whereas, I am unable to in person. Thank you and bless you for reading and understanding.
Harrison, I never read a better description of the challenges of being autistic in our society. I knew that you were very intelligent from your postings. I am retired from working in the field with people with disabilities, some who were non-verbal, some who were autistic children and later adults, even before that label was used in the early 1970’s. Thank you for your explanation. I too very much enjoy this site, not only for our common interest in old cars and trucks.
Well said, Harrison.
To NHDave: I take it that you are in New Hampshire — not all that far away from me. Are you on the Spectrum, too?
The dealer calls this a muscle car in his listing. It’s got 150 horse power. That nitpick aside, that is not a 21,000 mile car and the lack of any decent photos proves that. Not knocking the car itself, I am a true blue Grand Marquis fan, have an 03 and an 09 Lincoln Town Car. The comment about replacing a water pump being difficult. Yeah, it’s time consuming, but today, Ford water pumps are INSIDE the engine. Go change that one if you think a 5.0 is tough. Like everything else today, new vehicles are total junk and very hard to work on.
Thank you, Dave, and NHDave!
To Dave: Intelligence, as you know from your profession, has many facets. I.Q. tests do not even measure intellectual capacity accurately, because they rely upon the EVIDENT RESULTS IN ACCUMULATED KNOWLEDGE, at least as much as they do one’s native ability to learn and process novel information. This creates an inevitable cultural bias — because, just what a person has come to know depends heavily upon cultural exposure. Moreover, results can be profoundly affected by how one psychologically reacts to tests and time-limits. Some people suffer some level of anxiety, even panic, when confronted with a test. You see this with a child in school, who can discuss the material learned, then “go blank” when required to take the written test. I happen to become relaxed and focused when presented with a written test — because it does NOT require me to INTERACT WITH A PERSON OR PEOPLE. Hence, my I.Q. results are unusually high. Someone my equal in intellect might struggle to reach a 100 I.Q. on a test, because the test itself triggers anxiety. As a little boy, I was tagged as “gifted”, because I learned to read at 2-1/2 (thanks to my older sister wanting to play “school” with me as her student!), and my REASONING was precocious. I could discuss current events in the news on an adult level when I was three, and I was in total command of the facts — from listening intently to Lowell Thomas every night, and from reading the newspaper. And so, great things were expected from me long before I entered kindergarten. HOWEVER, this was owing to the fact that I was nearly obsessively focused on following current events intently. And that is the key: an Autistic child can be a walking encyclopaedia on a topic which happens to interest him, and thereby SEEM vastly more brilliant than he actually is. He might know every make, model, and year, of automobile that he sees (as I did), but cannot dress himself without assistance. He might (as I did) pick up on patterns in the sky and be able to accurately predict the weather. But he has no idea how to enter into and participate in a social conversation — either, that his hearer might have less than NO interest in cumulo-nimbus cloud formations. I never understood the point, for example, on saying openers such as “It’s rather cold to-day; isn’t it.” Everyone KNOWS that — and for me, talking was a way to exchange information which might be new to hearers. My intelligence of social matters was “out to lunch” — and on physical intelligence, such as the ability to hit a baseball coming toward me with a bat, or bowl without the ball going into the gutter, was even worse. But an I.Q. test does not deal with these other forms of intelligence — it attempts to measure only how well one learns and processes information, and draws conclusions — not, for example, if one is too clumsy to dance, even after much training and practice. Or, if one can drop a basketball through a hoop. These things require intense intelligence of a kind that I decidedly lack. My funds of intellectual knowledge, also, tend to be keen in certain narrow areas and woefully lacking in others. Expressing my mind verbally happens to be a point of strength, hence I appear intelligent “on paper”. I know that you fully realise these things about an Autist (and no two Autists are alike), but others reading our discussion might not — so this is for the benefit of any who are not clinicians that have worked in the field of disabilities, or in psychology.
Harrison, I think I share some of your traits, but not others. I was basically an only child, that is until my brother came along 4.5 years later. I was very good, and still am, at entertaining myself, therefore. I have fond early memories of lining up my toy cars and trucks on the sidewalk behind an old farmhouse where I lived with my parents and grandmother. We moved when I was 5 into a new house when my brother was an infant. One difference is that I am easily distracted when taking a test, not that I am so nervous. I may need to reread a question several times or move on and return later. That means that time is my enemy. I can usually do very well, especially on multiple choice tests, if there is no time limit. All of us are different or similar in some ways. My wife was an English major and she does much better than me with word games or puzzles. But I am the better speller. She asks Alexa (computer) how to spell a word and I reply from the other room. Why don’t you ask me? I know that others may not be interested in our conversations as not car related. Well, I was told that my first word was “kruck”. The old farmhouse was on a busy road, an anachronism from the time of the horse. It was knocked down after we moved, and Prudential Insurance built their building there. Lots of trucks still go by at that site. I am on my 5th old truck, this one a 66 F-100. I have done some upgrades for safety or to make it run better in the past 5 years.
Hello, Dave. One indicator that one might be Autistic is, social difficulties which become extreme in adolescence, being bullied, becoming a “target”, etc.. But lining toys up into rows could be another. It might be very helpful to have a diagnosis done, because that could open doors, and will at least answer questions. An actuarial questionnaire often is given to an adult, to determine a number of preferences and other possible indicators that one might be Autistic. It can provide valuable information to you. Many could be “on the borders” of Autism, without rising to the clinical level needed for a diagnosis. This result, too, can be valuably informative. If you think you might be “on the Spectrum”, then have it checked-out! But keep in mind, every human is peculiar in his or her own way.
Yes, lining up my toy cars and trucks when young seems like it could be a trait. I do like some order in life, like for my tools, but I’m also a hoarder. Too much stuff. Now that I’m old it needs to go to another home or reluctantly get recycled. I gave some things away at a flea market not long ago. That felt good.
Dave, you cannot possibly compete with me on HOARDING! (sorry). And I decades ago surpassed the age of “old enough to KNOW better” — yet I STILL don’t! In 1958, when WCOL (1230-Columbus, Ohio) decided to go strictly 45 rpm, Dr. Bop, their late evening disk-jockey [“Dr. Bop, here, makin’ the scene, with a stack o’ shellac on my record-machine!”], who always spoke in rapid-fire rhythm and rhyme (anyone who remembers Columbus at that time also will know “Jackson’s Beat”, the morning man on 610-WTVN), gave me the entire WCOL 78 rpm library, which otherwise was heading for the dump. Hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds of heavy records in box after box after box — virtually anything you might remember, from 1946 on forward to 1958: I still have them, and I still play them regularly. I save everything, just about, except for the daily newspaper. My home is a rabbit’s warren — but I know just exactly where everything is. If you might be looking for a two-transistor “boy’s radio” toy pocket radio from 1959, I have one, with the box it came in and the instructions and screw-in antenna (yes, the earphone, too) — and it still works (far better than one might expect, actually). I live in north-eastern New York, and I can tune-in Chicago or Fort Wayne — even Waterloo, Iowa — quite clearly on it at night. It doesn’t play very loudly, though — it has only two transistors, after all, and not very many components. But it is a fun piece to play with and runs nearly “forever” on a nine-volt battery. So yes, I save useless things; therefore, I qualify as a hoarder. Many smiles and greetings to you!