With our delving into all things Taurus this week, how about a little bit of winged messenger sriracha to spice things up? Seeing a first generation Taurus is rare enough all these years later, let alone the vastly lesser selling Sable.
Lesser selling is a relative term when discussing the Sable. Selling 97,000 units in inaugural 1986 – exceeding sales of the 1986 Cadillac Seville, Eldorado, and Fleetwood Brougham combined – the Sable wasn’t intended to be the volume seller the Taurus was. Taurus sales started off at 225,000 for 1986 and climbed to 342,000 by 1990. For our featured year of 1990 the Sable was humming along at 102,000.
By 1986, Mercury’s ultimately homicidal homogenization with Ford was all but complete. There had been a time when purchasing a Mercury at least bought a person a slightly longer wheelbase and perhaps an engine of slightly larger displacement.
This uniqueness started to erode with the Comet and pone-filled Montego (shown).
The conversion culminated with the 1979 Mercury Grand Marquis sharing a wheelbase with the same year LTD Crown Victoria. So much for Mercury being something unique.
Naturally, the Sable shared the 106″ wheelbase of the Taurus.
The upside is the Sable didn’t entirely follow what now appeared to be Ford’s short-sighted standard operating procedures. Whereas the contemporary Lynx, Marquis, and Grand Marquis differed from their Ford counterparts in little more than grilles, tail lights, and header panels, the Sable at least offered up some unique visual elements.
Up front, the band of headlights was fully functional. In 1986, my parents briefly looked at a new Sable wagon before purchasing their 1985 Crown Victoria. The strip of lights on the Sable was a really cool thing in my young mind at the time – almost enough to begin offsetting its being a wagon.
On the sedans, one didn’t have to suffer with a solid C-pillar, either. The Sable offered up a windowed pillar, which must have been a boon for visibility. The only demerit the Sable really gets is the semi-fenderskirted rear wheels. These fender skirts always come across like belching in the heat of flirtations with some sweet thing. It’s a wet blanket on the good vibes.
To the never ending credit of Mercury, they did get wise quicker than Ford in one key area. For a brief time during model year 1986, one could get a Sable sedan with the 2.5 liter four-cylinder. Quickly regaining their senses, Mercury eliminated this availability for 1987 whereas Ford kept it through 1991. It also prompts a question: Which had lower production volumes – a four-cylinder 1986 Sable or a 1976 Buick LeSabre with the 231 V6?
Airbags came along in 1990, so this car could be either a 1990 or 1991 model. The Sable that came along for 1992 wasn’t bad, but its being dumbed down to closer mimic the Ford was apparent.
Found nearly two years ago, it makes me wonder if this is the tail-end of first generation Sable sightings.
IMHO, this generation, and the 2nd the Mercury Sable are more attractive than anything offered after 1995.
My college girlfriend bought one new in 88, stellar looking car with many neat features and maybe the last time a Mercury wasn’t just a tarted up Ford. These sat on the same show room floor as the Merkur line which really muddled things up. Her dealer experience was poor, the PDI was so bad that they left their state of New Jersey dealership license plate stuck with magnets on the trunk lid. It’s still hanging in my garage 28 years later….
I was told back when the Sable came out that the front light bar cost over $1,000 to replace. Any truth to that?
My Aunt’s new first gen Sable had its front and rear fascia plus some more bits I think stolen off of it while they were vacationing.
Even the door skins were different between the Taurus and Sable, and the Sable had a longer tail. We had an 86 MT5, 89 SHO, 94 SHO, and 90 Sable. The Tauruii were Texaco company cars and the Sable was my mom’s. All were great cars, with the exception of the Sable blowing it’s head gasket at 115k miles. It was intended to be my first car, instead I bought a 90 Integra. The SHO would be replaced with an Explorer (moved to Utah) and the Sable, with an E320 4matic. That was a bigger POS than the Sable and was recently replaced by an Explorer. I always enjoyed the ride and styling of the Sable, especially growing up in the backseat. There were a lot of little details that Ford would do away with in the 2nd generation (compared to the SHO). My dad primarily bitched at the cost of the bar light bulbs. if kept in good condition, these cars have aged well in terms of styling. Better than a lot of their contemporaries.
Absolutely correct. Ford actually made a big point of this during the unveiling of the Taurus/Sable. Every body panel between a Sable and a Taurus were different. The shapes were the same, to be sure, but that’s more a function of 1980s unibody engineering and the inability to escape the hard points while running them down the same line than anything else.
I always thought the light bar was a neat look, but it always drove me nuts when I’d see a Sable with one bulb out. I wonder how many tightwads looked at the price of a bulb and declared they weren’t paying it.
We don’t stock them anymore but the number is 2040 and they are $7 for a blister pack of 2. Camaros and Firebirds used to use a 891 bulb in the 3rd brake light and those suckers were $10 each back then and there were 5 or 6 in the light–that hurt during a safey check.
I’ve known of Sable owners who would yank all the bulbs after the first one went, since an odd one out was an inspection fail (“all lights must be functional”) but if none of them worked the mechanic couldn’t prove they ALL had functional lightbars, especially after the Tracers (and base secondgen Sables?) had nonfunctional ones from the factory.
SHO’s as company cars is pretty sweet! My dad always had LTD Crown Vic’s as company cars until 1992 when the new Crown Vic’s came out. His boss didn’t like them and switched the entire fleet to Explorers. He had a 92, 96, 2000, 2004, 2008. Then the boss got on a kick about how everyone had to have a diesel VW Passat. It was hard for dad to go back to a car after that many years in an SUV. Funny thing is, the wait for a diesel was so long that the boss just got my dad a gaser. He’s still got this car now. So anyway yeah, SHO company car, pretty cool.
I always thought Mercury sold a (slightly) classier looking car in most market segments than Ford did, and loved it when the stylists went the extra mile to differentiate a Mercury from a Ford.
For me, that “flying” roof with it’s rear wraparound window was THE most striking feature of the Sable sedans. If many of the Sables produced had not already had that grey lower cladding (which I think they carried quite well) a contrasting color for the roof would have been icing on the cake….so to speak.
Then there was that “light bar” across the front. Almost a ground-breaking design element, and copied by a couple of competitors.
As a whole, I saw the Sable as the closest America got to producing a car in the vein of large Citroen sedans. Unfortunately, the 3rd and 4th generation models tossed that ground-breaking styling over for a poor imitation of Taurus styling.
Oddly, the 1 or 2 first gen Sables I have run across for sale “locally” had the troublesome 3.8 liter engine.
Last week it was asked “what car deserved a better platform/drivetrain?” A 1st gen Sable with the last gen’s 3.5 V6 and 6 speed automatic would make a truly outstanding car.
The wraparound-look roof did create a flying wing similar to that used on the ’59-’60 GM big cars and the 1st-gen Corvairs. Neat effect.
My Mom’s next door neighbor had a light blue ’86 Sable sedan that they bought brand new. It was the wife’s car, and she said it was by far her favorite car out of the many that preceded it. One of her favorite features was the rear window that wrapped around the car. It made blind spots almost non-existent. She loved it so much that she kept it for over 10 years. It had developed a lot of body rot over time and she often tried to get it repaired. It eventually got to the point where the rot was unstoppable. I asked her one time about the front light bar because hers was totally out, and she had totally forgotten that it was even there – more than likely most other owners did too! Apparently the bulbs weren’t cheap, either. Too bad – that light bar was truly a unique Mercury signature feature.
It’s especially ironic that of all the GM brands to mimic the light bar, it was Pontiac. I could have seen Olds trying that but not Pontiac (I always preferred the Grand Prix coupe front over the sedan anyways).
I forgot about the GP with the light bar!! I think the coupes were a lot nicer looking too.
Back in 2001, me and my wife went to a Mercury dealership to take a look at a 2000 Cougar for her. Also in the lot there was a 2000 Sable, I asked her if she would consider a more comfortable 4 doors sedan instead the sporty Cougar, her answer was: “Are you kidding me?”
“…SPORTY Cougar”?
#BAWAHAHAHAHA
The 2000 Cougar was a sporty coupe, if not a sports car. Perhaps you’re thinking of the big RWD Cougar, which departed after 1997?
It was a very sporty coupe. In fact, when I was working at a Mitsubishi dealer in 2000 it was very often cross-shopped against the Eclipse, a car which it resembled greatly.
I remember when these came out, thinking that Ford was finally getting serious about giving Mercury some unique styling. The doors, fenders, rear quarters, roofline, front and back were all different from Taurus. The Sable got a unique dash too. I recall these selling pretty well and having a look that made a difference in peoples’ perception of the car.
A unique engine might have been a selling point, but it turned out that the Taurus and Sable were unique in the way that GM had been differentiating brands since the late 70s – all the difference was body and interior, while the guts were identical.
Sadly, by the time the first redesign came along, it was plain that the plan to differentiate the Taurus and Sable from one another had gone away, with the Taurus side crease showing up on the Sable, along with other modifications.
FoMoCo was trying to differentiate more with the first Sable, to compete more with GM and imports. But in time, they morphed into just another Taurus/fleet car.
“Middle price” brands don’t exist really anymore and the Titanium trim Fords are essentially ‘modern Mercurys’.
Am I the only one who prefers the original, more squared-off front end with the yellow turn signals? I find it more crisp and Audi-like. I can see how the facelifted front end may have looked cleaner in press photos, but it did not age well once it oxidized.
On the ’92-’95, however, I strongly prefer the Sable (and Taurus SHO) front end styling to the sleepy-looking regular Taurus.
+1
Although most seldom notice, there was a minor change in the Sable front between for the 1989 models, though both were nominally “first-generation” models. The 1989 had a redesign that directed more air through the radiator, by blocking off the “slot” underneath the headlights and leaving it open under the light bar. At the same time the light bar was redesigned so that when lit up, there was no dark divider at the center, where in the 1986-1988, the dark divider was right where the Mercury “M”-blem was.
The Taurus was changed, too, for better airflow; but having no light bar, the change was even less obvious than on the Sable.
+2.
The first generation Sable had a MUCH more attractive interior also.
I had never noticed the differences until now. The one you posted does have a crisper look than the featured car (though it also suffers from everything being out of alignment.)
I saw one of these back in the day, stretched 3 feet into a limo. It looked more like a submarine than a car.
Sables were actually mildly popular for limo conversions in the late 80’s. It managed to look futuristic and formal at the same time. Back when I was in grade school and we had to do those fundraisers selling candy/knicknacks/whatnot, the kids who sold the most got treated to lunch and got to ride there and back in a limo. One year I clearly remember the limo was a monochromatic white 1st-gen Sable. Hot stuff for the time!
In this generation I prefer the Taurus over the Sable. The 3rd generation I deplore. In the 4th generation I prefer the Sable over the Taurus.
I have forgotten where I read it (may have been in Eric Taub’s book, Taurus, The Car That Saved Ford), but supposedly the “original” design for the 1986 models was the Sable, with the Taurus having come later with “less-extreme” styling for its intended mass market.
Among my Tauri/Sables were two Sables. The 1987 wagon had the totally-different “spaceship-pod” dash. The 1992 was a near-clone of the Taurus, with an identical instrument cluster in an only slightly different dash. By the third and fourth generations, the dashboards were indistinguishable.
The Sable is a prime example of how Ford slowly gave up on the Mercury brand through the 1990s and 2000s. This Gen1 version, like many of the above comments point out, hardly shared any actual sheetmetal with the Taurus and had unique interior bits. It looked and felt different enough to warrant someone purchasing it over the Ford. That roofline alone was super unique and radical at the time, not to mention the front light bar.
Then came the revised Gen2, with a more similar dashboard to the Taurus and some shared exterior panels. The Gen3 (catfish version) ditched the trademark lightbar completely, but at least kept a unique rear window. By the time the Gen4 came out in 2000 (bland rental version), the Mercury shared practically every part with the Ford. The interior was identical save some fake wood inserts and the logo on the steering wheel, the doors and body sculpting were almost exactly the same; there was no longer any reason to “step up” to a Sable. It became such an obvious cookie cutter job.
By the 2000s, the Sable (like the Fusion-clone that followed it) simply gave Lincoln-Mercury dealers a cheap cloth-upholstered sedan to sell among the more expensive and traditional cars.
I had a 2005 Sable that I bought slightly used. Great car. With the 3.0 v6 it had good power and got consistent 28 mpg in mostly highway driving. When the nit pickers would ask why I bought the Mercury over the “same car” Ford, I would tell them that a Mercury is easier to find in a parking lot than a Ford.
Just like the Crown Victoria stole the Grand Marquis roof, the Taurus stole the Sables back window in 2000 making the Ford a Mercury clone rather than the opposite.
My dad had an ’88 Sable. I was undecided on the looks (though it looks a helluva lot better than most anything made today), and never gave the car much serious thought until dad and I took it from western NC to Cincinnati at the end of July 1990 to catch a Reds homestand. I drove almost the entire way back and it was, without a doubt, one of the best, if not the best, roadtrip cars I had ever driven. I was 25 at the time.
Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait while we were in Cincy. We found out about the invasion while eating breakfast at a Waffle House. The world hasn’t been the same since.
Of course, that was also the trip where I told dad that if he got a speeding ticket it was because he was the only car going slow enough to catch!
But that, as they say, is another story.
Sadly, Mercury was dead to me long before it actually died. If Ford could not be bothered to do anything but put a waterfall grille and a red reflector strip between the taillights on a Ford and call it a Mercury, why would a customer be interested in paying more ?
It wasn’t even a half hearted try, like the 61 Monterey.
I thought there was hope for Mercury with the Sable, but could never understand why they bothered with different body panels to make the Sable different from the Taurus when they both look essentially the same, minus a few differences.
The Sable probably validated Ford’s retreat from marketing Mercury as anything but a Ford with model specific hash as being not worth the extra cost to differentiate the two brands.
A prime example of brand mismanagement over several decades.
Was it really so hard, Ford? A longer wheelbase, nicer interior trim, more sound deadening, value worth the premium? What a concept.
The Sable, one more thrust and retreat for Mercury. Up your flue, Ford.
Here in Portland, OR there are about 1/2 a dozen 1st gen Tauruses still moving under their own power, but Sables are quite rare. Earlier this year I saw an 86-95 Sable with a fully functioning lightbar. What did Ford make their bumper covers out of?
My dad owned a 1992 Cutlass Supreme W-body sedan with the 3.1 and 4T60 trans axle during the early 1990’s and our neighbor across the street had the same year Sable second generation with the Vulcan 3.0 and AXOD-E trans axle. Even with it’s cheapened interior the Sable did have the edge with it’s driver’s side airbag and better ergonomics. Both cars were comfortable and rode quite well with the Mercury having the edge in steering response. They also had similar levels of performance but it was delivered in a different way from one car to the next. The Ford didn’t start pulling until it gained some revs whereas dad’s 3.1 pulled really hard on take off but had less steam on the top end. The Cutlass got much better highway mileage than the Mercury however and at exactly 55k miles they were putting there first replacement transmission in the Mercury. Dad’s Cutlass was flawless mechanically lasting us well over 100K with no engine or transmission work and still running like a top. The only area of bother on that Cutlass was the rear brakes. The slides would seize up after 2-3 Winters and the pads would disintegrate. We found new slides and an upgraded grease kit that helped with that issue along with higher end rotors and pads. The neighbors Sable was pretty good as well after the first trans axle was replaced but they did need more suspension work including ball joints, tie rods on the driver’s side and the rear springs needed replacing because there was a bad clunk in the rear going over bumps. By the late 1990’s dad traded his 1992 Cutlass in for a super clean low mileage 1994 (from our dealership) with the upgraded 3100 and 4T60-E transmission. The neighbors dark blue Sable was nearing 100K and another possible transmission issue so they traded it in on a beautiful 1998 Grand Marquis which proved to be a much better car. They had that light blue Mercury GM until 2 years ago when the husband sadly passed away and the wife now drives a Honda CRV passed down by her daughter. Good memories.
I had a Sable in wagon form. Mine, however, was a compact:
My grandmother had a troublesome ’89 Continental (air suspension woes) and when she’d had enough of it, I talked her into ordering a ’91 Sable LS. What a nice car, and such a different car from the Taurus L my aunt had: MUCH nicer interior, many interesting design features, and of course it was prettier. Driving the two cars was quite a contrast: the 4-cylinder L seemed under powered and a bit weezy, while the 3.8L V-6 Sable was quiet and had decent power. The Sable LS also had a beautiful blue cloth interior, certainly the rival of a concurrent Audi. It had a certain quiet, confident, competent demeanor about it that was rather unique. She eventually gave up driving and gave the car to me — 10 years old with exactly 15K miles! I already had 3 other cars and no garage to keep it in, so sold it after a few months. I’ve always regretted that, because I’d love to show up at car shows with it today — they are not a common site any longer.
We owned a 1989 Sable that we bought in 1996-97 or thereabouts. It had a freshly rebuilt 3.8 in it. It was almost a TWIN of the one in this article!
I spent $20-25 for replace all the bulbs in the grille area.
It was a fantastic road trip car. GREAT gas mileage, too. We drove it to Florida and back twice, and all over Michigan.
The main issue with the car was the overheating starter/solenoid/whatever it was. It would get hot and quit running. A common issue with Tauruses and Sables back in the day.
It kept right on going until its transmission went out after we sold it to a family member.
After looking for several months, about a year ago I rescued this First Generation Mercury Sable from an estate sale on a farm in a tiny little town called Robersonville, about an hour inland from the North Carolina Coast. Following a lot of work by two different mechanics, it is roadworthy once again. I’m saddened there are very few of these space-age looking beasts left. I don’t feel like they were ever really recognized for their cutting-edge aerodynamic styling, which many of you have mentioned in the multiple posts that have preceded mine. I see the last post was added three years ago. This car was granted a unique reprieve: the single owner prior to me was an elderly farmer. After his death the car was stowed away in a barn, where it slumbered for nearly a decade. With just over 60k miles on it, there are still many more to go. It has proved to be extremely reliable and comfortable. One additional note: a little excited to boast that I finally got the full frontal bar of lights completely functional again. It only cost me about $20 total!
Good for you! I bought a new Sable in 1987. Its streamlined design really knocked me out. I especially liked the light bar and the blacked-out C-pillar. Solid Vulcan 3.0 V6, very smooth ride and good handling. It was a great all-around family sedan that I enjoyed driving. Thanks for keeping one on the road.