No more Minivans for Mercury as Villager is given the push.(Brief Article)

US Ford Motor Company does not intend to offer minivans in its Mercury line after the 2001 model run. That's when Ford and Nissan Motor Corp. will end their joint minivan production venture in Avon Lake, Ohio, and Ford sources say there will be no more Villager models or any other vehicles of that kind in their company's Mercury stable for the foreseeable future.

The impending demise of the Mercury Villager is not surprising to industry analysts in North America, or to anyone who knows the difficulty of one of the tasks undertaken by Ford's Premier Automotive Group (PAG) -- the task of trying to turn Mercury into a profitable operation with classy products that blend …