Mercury Villager

The Mercury Villager is a minivan that was manufactured and marketed by Nissan for the model years 1993–2002, in a single generation. Internally designated as model VX54, the Villager was a rebadged variant of the Nissan Quest—a product of a joint venture between Ford and Nissan, manufactured at Ford's Ohio Assembly plant in Avon Lake, Ohio.

Noted for its innovative seating configurations, the Villager featured a folding, removable, middle seat (or two buckets) along with a non-removable, fold-and-slide track-mounted rear seat. The arrangement enabled the rear seat to slide forward to the middle position for five-passenger seating, or completely forward against the front seats to make a larger cargo space.

Etymology

"Villager" first appeared at Ford as the name of the Edsel station wagon, the Edsel Villager, in 1958. The Villager name resurfaced at Mercury on a woodgrained Comet station wagon from 1962 to 1967, and subsequently on similarly trimmed wagons in other Mercury series, including the Montego (1970–1976), Bobcat (1975–1980), Cougar (1977 and 1982), Zephyr (1978–1981) and Lynx (1981–1984). On Mercuries, the Villager name almost always denotes a top trim, wood grained wagon. Villager was the equal of the Ford designation "Squire". The Mercury equivalent of the more well known Country Squire full-size station wagon was the Colony Park.