Ford may have killed the brand so fleet of feet, but it will live on among us collectors, who almost seem to love an orphan marque more than one still alive and kicking. And today, our tribute to Merc continues on the Hemmings Six Degrees of Automotive Separation Challenge.

Like with last week’s challenge, we’re going to introduce an element of difficulty to this week’s challenge. Looking over the history of Mercury, it seems as though Ford never really cut the apron strings for its medium-priced brand, so one would think that any six degrees solution involving Mercury would have to go straight through Ford. But not so quick – we know of at least one Mercury model that can be linked to the greater automotive world without linking first to Ford, and we bet you know more. Thus, let’s see how you can do without using Ford at all in your chain of connections.

Also like last week, this will be a fox-and-hound challenge. For newcomers to the game, the fox-and-hound format works like this: The first person to leave a comment here gets to suggest another company to connect to Mercury in six degrees or less. Whoever successfully answers that challenge then gets to suggest another company to connect toMercury , and so forth. As always, a connection consists of one company owning another, merging with another or sharing another’s parts.