Billfold Wallet - 1997 Mercury Grand Marquis

The Grand Marquis was the Mercury version of the Ford Crown Victoria — same Panther platform, same 4.6-litre modular V8, slightly different chrome. Built at the St. Thomas Assembly plant in Ontario from 1979 through 2011, the Panther chassis was the longest-running body-on-frame passenger-car platform in modern North American history. The 1997 Grand Marquis sat near the middle of its production run, just after the modular V8 replaced the older 5.0-litre engine.

It was the official car of the American taxi fleet, the unmarked detective unit, the rural police cruiser, the airport limousine, and, for two decades, the suburban grandparent. The Crown Victoria — and by extension the Grand Marquis — became visually inseparable from late-twentieth-century American civic infrastructure. Men in Black put one on screen as government issue. The Departed filled half the streets of Boston with them. The car was so deeply embedded in the cultural background that most people had stopped seeing it.

Ford built nearly 4 million Panther-platform sedans across thirty-two years before discontinuing the chassis in 2011. The Grand Marquis specifically ran for over 1.5 million units. The original St. Thomas-fitted interiors — broad bench seats in cloth or full leather, with the distinctively soft Mercury-trimmed door cards — represent the last truly American full-size sedan cabin of the twentieth century.