To celebrate Black Friday we have a grey car, and today’s Sable wagon doesn’t even require fighting throngs of shoppers to buy. You’ll just need to decide whether or not it’s the deal of the day.

Corinthians 13:11 reads in part - and I’m paraphrasing here - ‘when I was a child I did the things children do, but when I became a man I put those childhood ways behind me.’ I call baloney on that. I don’t think you ever need to give up the joys of fart jokes, Saturday morning cartoons, or the fear that the opposite gender may in fact have cooties.

One thing I do think you should put on the shelf once Juvie is no longer an option is training wheels on your bike. I mean, unless you have a physical limitation, in which case by all means trike away. A lot of you agreed with me and the 58% Crack Pipe loss earned by Wednesday’s proved that you’d have to offer something damn cheap to overcome the three-wheeler’s stigma.

Okay, so it’s not surprising that most of us it seems like our bikes to be able to lean. You know though, back in the day that’s how American cars cornered too. They were designed for those mythical wide open stretches of straight highway - ribbons of road - long celebrated in both music and macadam.

In fact, when it came to improved handling most American car companies didn’t even get how to market it, calling firmer suspensions things like ‘Heavy Duty’ and even going as far as to tout their models’ ‘road-hugging weight.’ Geez, those times totally sucked turkey tail.

By the time the Eighties rolled around it seemed that the Americans got a clue and that clue was that unless they changed their products dramatically the imports were going to clean their proverbial clocks.

There was perhaps no more dramatic paradigm shift in the automotive world than Ford’s introduction of the Taurus and Mercury Sable cars. Holy cow were they different, and better, and all those other positive adjectives you can think of.

This is representative of that revelatory first generation and comes not just with one of the funkiest wagon body styles ever conceived - shared with the Taurus - but also the Mercury’s iconic light bar front end which in my book (which admittedly has more pictures than words) is one of the best ever.

You don’t find too many Sables of this era on the road any more. That’s because most of them were driven into the ground. This one looks to be in reasonably good shape, with seemingly all its body-side cladding intact. That’s a plus as these tend to lose the door cladding, and they look like a hillbilly’s ride when they do.

There does seem to be a ding in the left-rear corner on this one, an expensive place to have a ding as it’s at a fold in the metal. But then, if it’s perfection you’re seeking, you’ve probably already voted down this car and have moved on. Bye, friend!

Moving on ourselves to the interior the first thing you’ll notice is the amazingly low hump in the floor and the complete lack of a center console. This allows for unfettered games of footsie between driver and passenger at the drive-in so maybe you’ll need to reconsider that whole cootie issue.

You’ll also note that the leather front seats are wrapped in lumpy, frumpy seat covers. That immediately reminds me of and of . The back seat looks to be in fine shape however, and otherwise the insides don’t appear a bad place to be. The ad notes that all the buttons and knobs work in there too.

Power is supplied by Ford’s stalwart 3.0 Vulcan V6, an all-iron pushrod mill that Ford cranked out by the hundreds of thousands. And yes, a Yamaha SVO and Mazda five-speed will fit in its place. Right now the 145-bhp six is paired with Ford’s AXOD four-speed automatic. Those have apparently provided 159,000 miles worth of team effort, and the car has seen $900 worth of A/C work a couple of years back.

Black Friday is the traditional feeding frenzy shopping day when deals are to be had, but at the cost perhaps of your sanity or dignity. If you’re viewing this post on your cell phone while sitting outside a Kmart waiting for it to open so you can grab a $299 60-inch TV then you’ve probably already voted down this car and have moved on. Bye, friend!

If instead you’re safely at home hand-crafting sensible holiday gifts for those near and dear then you’ll likely be interested in knowing what this seller is asking. That would be $1,200 which is cheap when it comes to jewelry for that certain someone, and we’ll need to decide if it’s also cheap when it comes to this car.

What do you think, is this tidy Sable worth that? Or, does that price seem not to be a door-buster?

You decide!

Spokane , or go if the ad disappears.

H/T to brasolt03 for the hookup!

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