Ford’s one-year-only Canada model.
It has been traditionally typical for American-brand sellers in Canada to supply expanded product lineups, usually to provide a marque better enchantment to buyers in search of one thing both roughly costly than may in any other case be supplied.
Frontenac: Forgotten Automobile Manufacturers
Canada
One purpose for that is that Canada’s inhabitants density is far decrease than that within the U.S., so automotive makers wanted to enchantment to bigger teams of buyers with fewer shops. In consequence, Ford, for instance, typically bought a premium mannequin which may enchantment to potential Mercury buyers, and Mercury typically had a mannequin on the low finish of its lineup to enchantment to conventional Ford patrons.
1960 Frontenac
An instance of this cross advertising got here—briefly—for the 1960 mannequin 12 months. That 12 months Ford of Canada launched the Frontenac to provide Mercury-Meteor sellers a low-price compact car to promote.
Ford Falcon
Frontenac was a separate model, like Mercury was to Ford—however was bought via Mercury shops. Produced for the 1960 mannequin 12 months solely, the Frontenac was basically a Ford Falcon that includes a novel front- and rear-end therapy, and a few particular trim bits.
Inbuilt Canada, the Frontenac bought fairly nicely by Canadian requirements, with buyers snapping up nearly 10,000 examples. The Falcon clone was supplied in coupe, sedan, and wagon physique kinds, with the wagon arriving late within the mannequin 12 months.
Mercury Comet
For 1961, the Frontenac model disappeared, and the Frontenac automotive was changed by the mechanically equivalent—and equally value–Mercury Comet, which was already on sale within the States.
The Frontenac identify had been used beforehand for a mannequin produced by New York carmaker Dominion Motors between 1931 and 1933 for autos assembled and bought in Canada.
Hearken to the Automobile Stuff Podcast
Frontenac: Forgotten Automobile Manufacturers Footage
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