Commenter Of The Day: Glass Family Edition

There's that moment that most people have, somewhere around high school, when J.D. Salinger becomes some sort of prophet. It starts with Catcher In The Rye but quickly that's dismissed as "junior high" reading (or it becomes the basis for an entire sad emo lifestyle) and quickly the young reader moves on to the Glass family series. For those who weren't screwed up by "A Perfect Day For Bananafish" or "Franny and Zooey," the Glass family is the fictional group of serious childhood geniuses that eventually spinoff into the less than satisfactory experiences of the first half of the last century. This is the basis for the Tenenbaum family in Wes Anderson's The Royal Tenenbaums, which included the tagline "Family Is A Four Letter Word," which fits into today's COTD nicely.

When we asked you if Ford's sister-brand Merucry should be spared the axe it was a common refrain that, like Pontiac, it should be a place for European/Australian Fords. Though we're generally in the "bring'em over" camp, our Canadian friend Acidic makes a good point:

As far as bringing all the Euro product over and selling it as Mercury; sounds great on paper (or blog I guess in this case) but when it really comes down to it Ford is 'I am Dave' and Lincoln is 'I am Dave's more successful brother, Phil.' I honestly don't like bringing in 'I am Dave's flamboyant middle-aged cousin Alexander' is going to do to much to help out the family that is FoMoCo.

Bring the Euro Fords over as Fords. Let Mercury either die or turn it into a mid-market performance brand. Let Lincoln take on the likes of Cadillac, Lexus, Infiniti, and a couple of the others. But, re-badging a Ford S-MAX to a Mercury Upscale Soccer Mom is, in my opinion, a disgrace to the Euro product.

Maybe the brand should just end up like Seymour or Walter.