In a word...

Scorpio intro	Styling	Design & engineering	Manufacturing	Marketing	Service & maintenance	About my Scorpio

Although the Scorpio marque continues as a premier range in Europe, Lincoln-Mercury imported it here for only the 1988 and 1989 model years. During that span a pitifully few 22,010 Scorpios reached North America, many of which went unsold and lived their brief lives as cars for executives, sales staff and dealers' relatives. Used models became scarce when dealers returned them to Ford or sold them at consignment auctions to avoid responsibility for servicing a car involving few parts and procedures shared with the rest of their stock.

There are several reasons why the Scorpio failed in the US and Canada. Most people reading this webpage can rattle off those reasons from memory. In summary, the failure arose from inept marketing, dealer apathy, and quirky subsystems. A common joke held that dealers shunned it because they couldn't figure out how to add a cloth roof.

At the risk of nauseating you, I should admit that here in Rochester, New York, there actually is a black Scorpio with a landau roof! Some addle-pated churl has covered up the rear quarter windows. Wow, dude: cool. Yeah, sherrrr.

And then there was that little problem with the name. Imagine this: you're about to introduce to the US public a car with features and appointments uncommon here. You have a limited budget. Why would you choose a name so strange to the American tongue that you'd have to squander money on teaching Americans how to pronounce it? (No slight meant toward my many Canadian friends. It's just that you're so much less provincial than we are in the States - no pun intended.) Hmmm. Come to think of it, BurmaShave did all right with its roadside signs on a limited budget....

The one marketing brightspot was the printed literature, especially the lavish 1988 showroom brochure. The 1989 brochure was nice too, but contrasted with the 1988 edition it suggests L-M was already losing heart. This gorgeous photo from the 1988 brochure makes the point. Even if I hadn't fallen in love with the Scorpio on our tour of Europe, images such as this one would have done the trick.

There was a pre-introduction direct-mail campaign aimed at existing Lincoln-Mercury owners and people who responded to multi-page ads in upscale magazines like "Smithsonian" and "Scientific American". In a handsome maroon envelope stamped in gold with Edsel Ford II's return address, a giant "SCORPIO" across the top, and the possibly apocryphal "Here's The Scorpio Preview Collection You Asked For" across the bottom, this letter greeted readers:

H. G. Gaffke
Chief of Design
Ford Werke A.G.
Koln
West Germany

The Scorpio project was one of the most demanding and exciting assignments in my own and my colleagues' careers. We started with a clean sheet of paper because our charter was to create a new vehicle that had virtually nothing in common with its predecessor. This is a rare opportunity, to design and develop an all-new automobile, and it resulted in a very special product.

The development focus for Scorpio came from customer input. Functionality, modern technology and high-quality appointments were the design parameters.

We realized that the interior dimensions and comfort were the key requirements, and we designed the vehicle from inside out to meet these requirements. The exterior needed to be fresh, modern, exciting and aerodynamically efficient.

When Scorpio won the European "Car of the Year" award, the Scorpio team knew we had the job done well. I think that, when you drive Scorpio, you will agree.

The body of the letter was set in a faux-Courier font, apparently to persuade the reader that Herr Gaffke had taken a moment from his busy day to personally type this intimate communication.

Accompanying the letter was the legendary 1988 salesroom brochure and a special single-fold gold-stamped glossy called "The Merkur Story" that featured both the Scorpio and the XR4Ti. It also showed a lovely Alpine house; I suppose it might have been Herr Gaffke's, except that it didn't have a Scorpio parked out front.

Paul Kuettel has reminded me that there was a TV campaign featuring Jackie Stewart. I'm pursuing that lead. Any further clues?

It certainly didn't help things when L-M reneged on the Guaranteed Resale Value Program. They did it to me. Anyone else?

Whatever the shortcomings of the marketing department, the publications people deserve a "Huzzah!" Just look at these detailed phantom renderings of the 1986 European Granada / Scorpio, showing its major systems and their interrelationship. These drawings were part of the press-kit.

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