Mercury may be on last legs | freep.com | Detroit Free Press The Mercury brand, created by Edsel Ford in 1939, was recently championed by Elena Ford, Edsel's great-granddaughter and the director of Ford's global marketing, who helped bring new products to the brand earlier this decade. In 2004, she helped unveil the Mercury Montego sedan, a vehicle that is no longer sold, and like most Mercury models, was a revamped version of a Ford product -- in this case, the old Ford Five Hundred. On Thursday, Bloomberg News first reported that Ford's top executives are preparing a proposal to kill Mercury to be presented to directors in July.