Somebody- maybe me- needs to start a car rental company for people just like me. People who can't stand automotive automotive incompetence... or even automotive mediocrity. I'd rent out Volvos, Saabs, Volkswagens, Minis, maybe even BMWs and Smarts. . And Porsches. Nothing crappy.

My boss is long-winded. He can come into my office to answer what shoud be a 15 second question and sit there flapping his gums for two hours. During last week's marathon chat a co-worker had to send me a text message on my phone to see if I needed her to pull the fire alarm so I could get him out of my office, enabling me to get some work done. In any case, my big old long-winded boss told me that he'd had a new Ford Escape rental the previous week, and that it was horrible. It felt rollover-prone, had poor handling, and terrible dashboard materials. This from a guy who (a) rents a lot of cars, and (b) owns a Kia Spectra. I'm not making this up.

In any case, his portrayal of the Escape, plus a fairly underwhelming experience with one in snowy Anchorage several years ago, caused me to ask for another car today when Ms. Avis-Spokane handed me the keys to an Escape. The "only thing" she had available was a Mercury Grand Marquis. When she told me that, I stood there, thinking about it, for a while. Seriously it must have been at least a full minute of me standing there at the Avis counter, going "Hmm... mmm... you said an Escape or a Grand Marquis...hmm.."

I went with the Mercury, because I remember how tippy and horrible my recent Jeep Liberty experience was, and I know how underpowered the Escape can be. I chose poorly. I'd forgotten that the Grand Marquis platform dates back to like 1990, a time when the "classic" Saab 900 was still in current production. The car's hard points are very 1980s in their locations, as is the horrific driving position. Much like Saab kept adding more electronic subassebmlies to their 17 year old 900 platform, so has Ford added the electronics to the Grand Marquis. The idea, however, remains the same. All the slippery, low-grade leather/vinyl, door-mounted seat controls (a la Mercedes), dim-witted automatic climate control, and in-dash info displays in the world can't dress up the old pig underneath.

The car floats on the highway like I remember floating on a waterbed once as a child. Shift quickly left then right, and a wave will come back to get you, an unwanted chassis oscillation upsetting the car's intended path. Venture on to a gravel road, and the "extremely isolated" steering and brake feel leave you with no clue whether the car is braking or skidding; accellerating or spinning the tires; turning or about to plow right off the outside edge of the curve.

Chrysler has come out with newer full-size cars in the Magnum/Charger/300 series; GM has very nice large cars like the Buick Lucerne (OK, one very nice large car plus a couple of AWESOME Cadillacs... the current Impala doesn't qualify as nice)... but Ford has the Crown Victoria, Grand Marquis, and Lincoln Town Car. It's disgraceful. Ford is trying to come back and is doing OK with the Edge and the Fusion triplets, but their current large cars are dinosaurs. Yuck. I'm not looking forward to the next few days piloting that beast around Coeur d'Alene.