Ford’s one-year-only Canada model.
It has been traditionally typical for American-brand sellers in Canada to supply expanded product lineups, typically to provide a marque higher attraction to customers in search of one thing both roughly costly than would possibly in any other case be supplied.
Frontenac: Forgotten Automotive Manufacturers
Canada
One cause for that is that Canada’s inhabitants density is far decrease than that within the U.S., so automobile makers wanted to attraction to bigger teams of customers with fewer shops. Consequently, Ford, for instance, usually bought a premium mannequin that may attraction to potential Mercury customers, and Mercury usually had a mannequin on the low finish of its lineup to attraction to conventional Ford patrons.
1960 Frontenac
An instance of this cross advertising and marketing 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 remedy, and a few particular trim bits.
Inbuilt Canada, the Frontenac bought fairly effectively by Canadian requirements, with customers 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 automobile was changed by the mechanically equivalent—and equally worth–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 Automotive Stuff Podcast
Frontenac: Forgotten Automotive Manufacturers Footage
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