It’s been a while since we last saw a new Mercury->ke55 roll out of production, but if Ford’s President of the Americas Mark Fields is to be believed, we might just see a new one out sometime soon.

Based on Ford’s->ke55 new global compact car platform, Fields recently announced that the company is scheduled to release up to 10 vehicles for its compact car architecture with one of them being a new – yet still to-be-named – Mercury compact car.

Speaking to a group of Ford’s US dealers at the National Automobile Dealers Association in Orlando, Florida recently, Fields made it known that Ford is exahusting any and all efforts in jump-starting some life into a Mercury brand that has been relatively idle for quite some time now.

It’s worth noting that while Mercury didn’t suffer the same fate as some of Ford’s other brands – Tracer, Sable, and Cougar – the fact that it hadn’t released a new model a while has led to some spculation that Mercury’s head would also end up on the chopping block.

But now that we’ve heard the brand is getting a new car straight from the horse’s mouth, it should douse any lingering doubts as to whether or not the future of Mercury remains in question.

A big part of Ford’s decision to produce a compact Mercury is caused by the increasing interest for fuel-efficient mid-premium cars has also given Ford the green light to jumpstart Mercury by releasing its own model that fits that particular market segment.

"The trend towards more fuel-efficient vehicles is very important, the trend toward (small) cars in general is coming back. We are responding to that," Fields said.

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