From the archives #83 (The new Avanti)

[Jim B PEI]

To be quite honest I think the two design exercises we see her are no match to what Studebaker put out on the market in '63 and '64. The dual headlight version and the version with the single headlight and an inboard parking light put too much aboard the limited area of the front panel of the Avanit. It looks cluttered.

Yes, the first thing I thought of when I saw what Craig posted was the Mekur. Why it works with that car and not the Avanit I am not sure. Perhaps it is simply a matter of scale.

If the inboards had been additional small 'grilled' air intakes rather than a parking light, and the 'Pontiac spear shape' had been a different iteration of the park lights, such as a amber bulb/bulbs behind an while/clear lens, that might have worked too, or at least might have been practical in getting a bit more low speed air flow to hot bits without ruining the design

[kurtruk]

Ford couldn't use the Sierra name since GM owns the name for their trucks...

Olds Cutlass Ciera was the reason. I don't think they were using the Sierra name for their trucks until later years.

[studegary]

Amazingly, I saw two Merkurs this week...one driving, one seems to be a long timed parked.
Great cars. When I lived in the UK they, the two door sport models like we got here, as well as 4-doors and wagons, were everywhere.

We got both the two door and the four door versions here. IIRC, the two door was the XR7 and the four door was the Scorpio. I had a neighbor that one of the four door models. It had about 150K miles on it when they replaced it with a 1996 Grand Cherokee that I located for them.

[Jerry Forrester]

Olds Cutlass Ciera was the reason. I don't think they were using the Sierra name for their trucks until later years.

I had a 1970 GMC Sierra. Not sure if '70 was the first year for the Sierra name or not.