About me: Just turned 40 in July, have been happily married for 12 years. I have three great kids, two daughters, and one son. We live in the midwest and I work in the bowling business.
The purpose of this blog is hopefully to follow the restoration of a 1988 Merkur Scorpio. For those of you who do not know what this car is, checkout merkurclub.com, or google it. Wikipedia has a good entry about it also.
My history with the Merkur brand goes back to 1995. I was dating my future wife, working at a local grocery store and bowling as much as possible. College had been great, but a Bachelor's degree in Earth Science had not paid off yet, so I was still looking for a career. In the next couple of months life would change as life does. The owner of the local bowling center was looking to expand and he asked me if I would be willing to manage a center if he bought another one. I met with him a couple of times and in the end I was on board. He purchased an 8-lane center in a small town and the next thing I was moving in. I asked my girlfriend to go with me, which she did, but she was still in college so we needed to find a more "reliable" car for her to drive.
I had kind of watched a car that was on a local car lot for at least a year without ever stopping by to drive it. It was an 1989 Merkur Scorpio. A four door sedan, power everything, leather interior, this one was kind of a champagne color, with a light tan interior. It had 72,000 miles on it and was in perfect condition. Originally the lot was asking $8000 for the car. It sold for 28,000 new, so this was probably a fair price. In the year that I had kind of watched it, the price kept dropping. My girlfriend and I made a decision to take a closer look at the car and fell in love with it. To make a long story short, we traded in her beat up little chevy, and got the Scorpio for $4000.
Our 1989 Champagne Merkur Scorpio
We moved and she started driving it back and forth to school. We kept the car for over six years. It had various quirks that kept me busy with it, but it was for the most part reliable. In the end we parted with it because we had moved to Chicago, I was now working for a large bowling company, and the salt started eating the car to pieces. It had 155,000 miles on it and we now had two kids. I didn't have a garage to work on the car and Chicago winters are brutal. I had owned the two door sibling of the Scorpio, an XR4TI during our time in Chicago, but traded it in for a mini-van for the wife.
Our 1989 Black Merkur XR4TI
So after driving the car for another six months or so we decided I needed something more reliable, so we traded it in for a Sebring convertible. I know, I know, not reliable, and not practical. It was fun, unfortunately it was a Chrysler and it had all of the problem that they tend to have. The junkie transmission being the most notable.
I need to go for now. I will finish this up soon
Darren
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