Holy fuck. Look at this thing. Look at it. It's an American sedan, so you can tell by the sheer displacement of this fucker that driving it is going to feel like you're intermittently cresting a wave as the shocks groan under the weight of it barrelling down the street, which is fitting, since the last time one of these was seen in the wild it failed a three point turn and held up shipping in the Suez Canal for six glorious days. This is the car for someone that has a conversation pit in their house, and enough cocaine in the trunk that any cop who dared stop you would laugh in disbelief before realizing you're not just a problem out of their pay grade, you're a problem with no earthly solution. You drive this car because the American Dream is something you can still slam into a concrete embankment at 60mph, get out, and light a cigarette. When you're drunk in California, there are kids careening over the hood in Oregon, because lead poisoning is cool. When physicists remark on the Rod of God destroying an entire continental plate, they aren't talking about a hyperkinetic tungsten rod bundle, they're talking about this car, and it might just edge out the Almighty's by a couple of feet. This car makes a statement: I'm Here to Fuck, and It Will Be Everyone's Problem.
It's called the Colony because it's the only name fitting enough for a station wagon intended not to carry a family from soccer practice to camp ground to cross-country vacation, but a brood suited to the task of colonizing whatever lush and fertile land your wood-paneled behemoth touches down on. It's a generation ship clad in the skin of its dead world's giants, floating the lonely lanes between midnight gas stations and slasher film rejects too intimidated by the keening, chattering mass of progeny one can cram into the back of this thing to even think about drawing their knife. Wherever you go, arrive confident that Richard Dreyfuss can tell you it means something. This is the only car worthy to bear its own Golden Record.
Not my photo but that was our family car (in that awful tan) from the 90s until about 2003 when my dad got a Ford Explorer SUV to haul both kids and lumber for his fence building side hustle.
Keep in mind, they released the second generation of this line in 91 and my parents bought an early 80s model used. Luxury cars age about as well as Florida retirees, and this one peaked in the womb.
This car was made with spite for humanity in mind. It should be illegal to line car seats with suede, and it should be double illegal to move to Florida with a car lined in suede. Every memory I have of this car is it inflicting violence upon me, whether it was sliding backwards down an icy hill because a V8 just spins garbage tires faster, or me learning through trial and error that those fun buttons in the back seat doors were cigarette lighters and they are not supposed to be touched after you take them out.
It wasn't even roomy, it just looked roomy! It's not a functional drug dealer car, it's drug dealer cosplay for the dad who keeps asking if he can put up the Scarface poster now that the kids are in middle school. If the Marquis is here to fuck, the Grand Marquis is just here to watch.
My favorite memory of this car is watching the guy my brother sold it to for like $150 drive off and my dad saying "Well that solves the bee problem."
The first car I drove was a Grand Marquis from the early 90s that, until I got my license, kind of just sat in our driveway as if it washed up there by complete accident. Irritating car in general, but to its credit it had front bench seats.
