The Mercury brand at Ford Motor Company coasted into 1948 with a product that was virtually identical to the previous year, but change was soon coming.
Introduced by the Ford Motor Company in 1939, Mercury was entirely the vision of Edsel Ford, as father Henry had little to no interest in the upmarket brand. When Mercury was redesigned in 1941, Edsel led that project as well. and with the intervention of World War II, this basic Mercury package would remain in production through 1948. Unfortunately, Edsel died in 1943 due to stomach cancer, while a planned redesign for that year was cancelled by the war. So as things turned out, the 1948 Mercury was among the final products at the Ford Motor Company in which Edsel had played the leading role—five years after he had passed on.
In fact, the 1948 Mercury was for all intents and purposes the 1947 Mercury, as they were virtually identical. The steering column and ignition lock, a Ford feature since 1932, was discontinued in favor of a conventional ignition key in the dash. The instrument panel faces were redesigned, and that’s basically it for visible changes in ’48. The original 1941 exterior, largely shared with Ford, had been the work of chief stylist Bob Gregorie, and the ’46-’48 facelift is clearly his work as well with its generous addition of chrome gingerbread at the front.
In the 1941 redesign, Mercury had lost much of its distinctiveness, as the basic body shell was now shared with Ford. For their extra cash, Mercury buyers received a four-inch longer wheelbase (118 inches), a better interior, extra bright metal, and a little more standard equipment. The Mercury slogan for ’48 was “More of Everything You Want.” While Ford prices ranged from $1,212 to $1,972, Mercury fell into a $1,645 to $2,207 bracket, placing it in direct competition with Pontiac and Oldsmobile.
Mercury had lost one more point of distinction with Ford in 1946, its larger and more powerful V8 engine. The ’46-’48 Ford and Mercury shared the very same 239 cubic-inch flathead V8 with a 3.19-in bore and 3.75-in stroke, rated at 100 hp. In truth, product development was nearly frozen in the immediate postwar years as incoming president Henry Ford II focused on rebuilding the company. The three-point suspension with transverse buggy springs shared by Ford and Mercury was state of the art when the Model T was introduced, but by 1948 it was woefully out of date. A running production change in ’47-’48 swapped out the hydraulic lever-action shock absorbers for modern telescopic dampers.
One model, Mercury Eight, and just four body styles completed the ’48 product line: a two-door Coupe-Sedan, a Convertible Coupe, a wood-bodied Station Wagon, and by far the most popular, the four-door Town Sedan with front-opening rear doors. Sales volume, which had never threatened the 100,000 mark in the brand’s history to that point, came to barely 50,000 cars in ’48. That was due in part to the abbreviated model year, which ended in April to make way for the radically new 1949 Mercury.
