If you've been pinching your pennies to buy a new full-size, rear-drive American sedan, we hope you like Ford and Mercury. The gang at the Blue Oval are the only ones building such cars these days. Decades old technology allows Mercury to keep the prices low, and the car is a favorite among fleet buyers for taxi companies, police departments, or just those who need space and towing power who don't want a minivan or pickup truck.

This grand dame of the Mercury lineup received a mild makeover last year, so changes to the 1997 model amount to the shuffling of a few packages and the changing of a few colors.

These days, the Mercury Grand Marquis and its Ford Crown Victoria stablemate offer much more value than most compact and mid-size cars that are being peddled at your local auto mall. Think about this: the Mercury Grand Marquis costs just over $26,000 fully loaded with electric everything and a leather interior. In contrast, a similarly equipped Toyota Avalon runs more than $30,000, and the much smaller Toyota Camry XLE costs $25,000; despite a wimpy (in comparison) V6, tight seating for five, and a comparatively minuscule trunk. Sporting a big car floaty ride and twitchy chassis dynamics at speed, the Mercury Grand Marquis is nonetheless comfortable. The handling and performance group adds a few horsepower and improves the car's stability in the twisties; we recommend it to anyone who enjoys back-country highways more than mind-numbing interstates for their family vacations.

So, if you're one of the few people unwilling to pay for a sport utility's high insurance premiums and abysmal gas mileage, or if you just can't stand the idea of a minivan, this is about your only choice. That's OK though. Unless you can get your hands on a 1996 Chevrolet Impala SS, we think that this is the best full-size car value on the market.