Overall, Mays said, "Blackwood is a vehicle that is as much at home hauling horses to an equestrian event in Texas as it is carrying a party of four to a Broadway play." Details on when Blackwood will come on the market, and how exactly it will be equipped, are still to be announced, but you can count on it showing up sometime soon.
The future of the three other concept vehicles shown at the LA show is more uncertain, but they looked like they could be done fairly easily since they use two Mercury production cars -- Grand Marquis and Cougar -- as their bases. As Mercury sees it, the Marauder concept allows you to have a few luxuries in a big, comfortable car powered by a hot rod V-8, without "acres of chrome" to slow you down. A Grand Marquis, in other words, that's spent a year at the gym and is now "trimmed down, pumped up and ready for action."
Power comes from a familiar source, the 4.6-litre V-8 found in many Ford, Mercury and Lincoln products, but for Marauder it's been given a supercharger from Ford's high-performance SVO group and a 2.25-inch dual exhaust exiting through a pair of 3-inch MEGS tips. The result of this is an exhaust note that "speaks performance, yet isn't too rowdy for everyday driving."
Edelbrock Performer IAS shocks, beefy sway bars and an aggressive wheel and tire package (17 inches up front, 18 in the back, all of them 8 wide) provide more cornering ability for Marauder than you get in a regular Grand Marquis. In the way of such cars, the exterior has been de-trimmed and painted bad-in- black, even the signature Mercury vertical bar grille.