Mercury Grand Marquis Review

This was the first car that Avis tried to give me last week during my trip to the mid-west. The lady at the counter in the terminal said that I could either wait about an hour for a PT Cruiser or take the Merc. I had already waited 45 minutes for my bags and was just ready to get out of St. Louis. The minute the Avis van pulled up to the car I knew I had made a mistake.

If you haven't sat in a Grand Marquis in the last 10 years you aren't missing much. Remember the old family sedan your folks drove in the early 80's? The one with the couch for a front seat? Yep, that is what the front seat of the Merc was like. You pretty much sank down into it. As a whole, the interior looked like it had not been updated since the 80's, which was about the last time they updated the car as a whole and the last time someone under the age of 60 bought one of these things. It was just poorly laid out. The split arm rest didn't fold all the way back level with the seat, the steering wheel was strange..... I don't remember much else, my mind has chosen to block most of this car from my memory. I don know that the trunk was huge. You could fit 5 or 6 friends in there. Although, the strange deep well in the middle of the trunk looks like it would make loading a few golf bags a little akward. Anyway, after 5 minutes of grumbling, I dragged my luggage up to the on-site customer service counter and demanded a new car. I lucked out and Avis was able to put me in a Mitsubishi Eclipse Spyder for less than the Merc cost.

So in review, I would much rather drive pretty much any car over the Mercury Grand Marquis/Lincoln Town Car/Ford Crown Victoria. They are just awful.