tell me why I shouldn't buy an '09 Grand Marquis with

Overpriced.

You'll be too lazy to turn it into a good sleeper.

>>17481845
I just want a reliable car that will last a long time for not very much money that isn't another damn civic or camry

>>17481839
what's a fair price according to you?

>>17481821
'04 and later Grand Marquis have shittier build quality and suspension, making for a less comfortable ride. Sucks down gas like there's no tomorrow but output is pathetic for a V8. Stigmatized as old person cars and the rear-drive powertrain means you'll be absolutely helpless in the winter.

>>17481903
>doesn't want either of the best cars in his price range
faggot

>>17481904
>Sucks down gas like there's no tomorrow
Yeah actual panther owner checking in: it's not an economy car by any means but it does get 26 mpg highway. Not too terrible.
>>17481904
>rear-drive powertrain means you'll be absolutely helpless in the winter.
Bullshit, millions of people get by in the winter with RWD trucks & cars without traction control or LSDs. Just throw a few hundred lbs of gravel in the back.

>>17482051
OP here
my previous vehicle was a RWD Chevy S10 which I imagine is worse than any sedan as far as winter handling goes
if it's really that bad, I can always just throw a sandbag in the trunk like I did with my S10

>>17482051
how do you like yours?
anything I should keep an eye out for that the seller might not have disclosed in his ad?

I have an 05 and I love it, "rwd is bad in the snow" is a meme if you have traction control. Normally I'd say don't buy it if it has the air suspension but at that price I'd say get it either way.

>>17481821
fuck how do you have those for only 1400? The ones where I live in NJ are generally 4-5k easy for something from that year with those miles.

>>17482241
I just set my price limit to 3k on CL and found several

I live near a major city in the midwest
the one I'm looking at also does have a little bit of rust, which is driving the price down

>>17481904
Bullshit. 2003 Ford redesigned the chassis with a stronger frame, rack and pinion steering and upgraded suspension.

>>17482032
Most Camrys and civics are owned by poor people that don't maintain anything.

>>17482192
This though heard the TC was pretty bad on them. At least you can turn it off. In a perfect world I would have a limited slip differential put in but that's $450-500 to do.

>>17482270
>Most Camrys and civics are owned by poor people that don't maintain anything
that's what I found looking at jap cars in my price range
they all sounded like dogshit and had disgusting interiors with tacky badly applied tint and shitty subwoofers

I figure the Mercury is an old man car so is more likely to be maintained and not trashed inside

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anons, what is it about the old boats that give them the "1-finger steering"?

>Pic Related, my 89 Grand Marquis

I want to buy a newer merc (while keeping my old one) but want the comforts the old one gives me (floaty ride, 1 finger steering, etc.). What year should I get?

>>17481821
Because that's too cheap. It's either salvage or shitty in some other way. That should probably be 3-5k

>>17482539
04 is considered the best year. 03 was the 1st year with 1st year problems of the new design, and in 05 they went to the electric throttle shit. So 04 is the best.

Not a horrible price, not the best price, but we don't know what the used car market is like in your area. Give it a thorough inspection and go for it if it feels good, they're not particularly difficult to work on or anything.

>>17481904
You've got it completely backwards, 2003 and onwards is the year Ford redid the suspension for the first time in decades.

>Sucks down gas like there's no tomorrow
They get completely average gas mileage, you just can't drive it like a grandma. Keep it above 60 and it's fine, it gets way better mileage than you'd expect because it's turning so little RPM at highway speed and a bit above; that 4R70 may be slow on the shift but the gearing is loooong, especially when combined with the 2.73 rear gears.

>output is pathetic for a V8
The output is fine, you'll never have trouble merging onto a freeway or anything stupid like that and you've got enough torque to climb ridiculous hills with barely any throttle input. It's the same 4.6 2v as Ford stuck in a bunch of other shit, it's just detuned in the Panthers for longevity instead of power.

> Stigmatized as old person cars
>implying that's a bad thing

>and the rear-drive powertrain means you'll be absolutely helpless in the winter.
Either learn to drive in the snow, or even better, get a good set of snow tires. Absolutely no issues with a set of Blizzaks or Nokians.

>>17482084
It won't be quite as bad as a pickup truck, but they can get kind of squirrely sometimes, especially in the dry on gravel, dirt, etc- 500lb of pig-iron V8 in the front and fucking nothing in the back with 121 inches of wheelbase between means the ass end will always try to break free before the front.

>>17482260
As long as the rust isn't on the frame and isn't bad enough to compromise it if it is, you're fine. Body panels are cheap to replace from scrapyards, from 1998 onwards most of them match the Crown Victoria, doubly so after 2003.

>>17481903
>I just want a reliable car that will last a long time for not very much money that isn't another damn civic or camry
well if that's all, then no reason not to, though I'd be suspicious of an '09 for that low. And I hear that the later year models are actually really shit in the build quality, because thats when Ford was shutting down mercury, and the cars are sloppily parts binned together

>>17482270
>This though heard the TC was pretty bad on them. At least you can turn it off.
Dunno how good or bad it is in the newer ones but the TC in my '01 is pretty alright. Keeps you going straight just fine in the snow and mud, times when if you turn it off you can actively watch the car start going sideways the instant you hit the button. There's times you'll want to turn it off before shooting a hill or when you know you might get a bit of slippage, for the same reason as most other cars with traction control (once it detects the rear end is spinning faster than the front, it'll cut the throttle and that is the last thing you want halfway up a hill); 01 onwards has the T/C disable as a handy button on the dashboard right by the headlights, which is extremely useful- older cars have it in the fucking glovebox which is horseshit. Regardless, it does actually turn traction control all the way off so you can do one-wheel burnouts all day, it's not like the nanny systems in most modern cars that still keeps a bunch of stability stuff turned on or even automatically turns the T/C back on if you push it too hard.

>>17482539
Massively overboosted power steering, usually.

>>17482636
Listen to this anon. There's no real flawed years for pre-03 cars (gonna say 98-02 looks the best for Marquis, though), but the intake manifold is a known failure point that you're gonna have to fix eventually. For 03+ cars, 05+ have drive by wire which is slow, awful, laggy garbage (so like 90% of cars with electronic throttle control), and the last couple years of the Panthers (2010/11 and a bit earlier) have heavily reduced quality control because by that point they knew the platform was gonna be axed and were just parts-binning shit together- well, even more than the cars are parts-binned normally, anyway.

>>17482881
Not just Mercury, the entire Panther body- the Grand Marquis and Lincoln Town Car were both stopped early outside of specialty dealer orders and the Crown Victoria was only available as a fleet-sale car for the last couple years of its life.