The Mercury Meta One was a

concept car A concept car (also known as a concept vehicle or show vehicle) is a car made to showcase new styling or new technology. Concept cars are often exhibited at motor shows to gauge customer reaction to new and radical designs which may or may not ...

that was created by Mercury. A four-door crossover sport-utility vehicle, the Meta One made its debut at the 2005 North American International Auto Show in

Detroit, Michigan Detroit ( , ) is the List of municipalities in Michigan, most populous city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is situated on the bank of the Detroit River across from Windsor, Ontario. It had a population of 639,111 at the 2020 United State ...

. The Meta One was notable for being the first concept vehicle designed with a

PZEV A partial zero-emission vehicle, in the United States, is an automobile that has zero evaporative emissions from its fuel system, has a 15-year (or at least 150,000-mile) warranty on its emission-control components, and meets SULEV tailpipe-emissio ...

diesel-hybrid powertrain."Mercury Meta One Concept Vehicle." ''Ford Motor Company''. February 4, 2007

Design

Loosely based upon the body of the production

Ford Freestyle The Ford Freestyle is a crossover utility vehicle that was sold by Ford from 2005 to 2009. Largely marketed as the successor to the Ford Taurus station wagon, the Freestyle was the CUV counterpart of the Ford Five Hundred and Mercury Montego ...

, the Mercury Meta One was a luxury crossover SUV with four seats. Serving as a testbed for in-vehicle technology, the Meta One featured an always-on

Wi-Fi Wi-Fi () is a family of wireless network protocols based on the IEEE 802.11 family of standards, which are commonly used for Wireless LAN, local area networking of devices and Internet access, allowing nearby digital devices to exchange data by ...

connection; along with the ability to connect handheld devices and the built in

Sirius Satellite Radio Sirius Satellite Radio was a satellite radio ( SDARS) service that operated in the United States and Canada. Sirius launched in 2002, and primarily competed with XM Satellite Radio, until the two services merged in 2008 to form Sirius XM. Li ...

, it also allowed the on-board navigation system to deliver real-time updates for traffic and route conditions. Instead of a traditional instrument panel, the vehicle featured multiple computer displays that were reconfigurable to fit driver needs. A special design for the

smart key A smart key is a vehicular passive entry system developed by Siemens in 1995 and introduced by Mercedes-Benz under the name "Keyless-Go" in 1998 on the W220 S-Class, after the design patent was filed by Daimler-Benz on May 17, 1997. Numerous ma ...

allowed it to double as a PDA, allowing it to also store emergency contacts. In collaboration with

Volvo The Volvo Group (; legally Aktiebolaget Volvo, shortened to AB Volvo, stylized as VOLVO) is a Swedish multinational manufacturing corporation headquartered in Gothenburg. While its core activity is the production, distribution and sale of truck ...

, the Mercury Meta One was designed with a number of safety technologies unseen on a production

Ford Motor Company Ford Motor Company (commonly known as Ford) is an American multinational corporation, multinational automobile manufacturer headquartered in Dearborn, Michigan, United States. It was founded by Henry Ford and incorporated on June 16, 1903. T ...

vehicle. These included lane departure control and collision mitigation by pre-charging the brakes if an on-board camera and radar sensor senses the likelihood of an accident.

Powertrain

The Mercury Meta One was powered by a 248 hp twin-

turbocharged In an internal combustion engine, a turbocharger (also known as a turbo or a turbosupercharger) is a forced induction device that is powered by the flow of exhaust gases. It uses this energy to compress the intake air, forcing more air into the ...

diesel V6; the 2.7L engine was sourced from the Australian Ford Territory (sized similar to the Freestyle) and the

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product lines. Coupled with the continuously variable transmission (as used in the Freestyle) was an electric motor, providing start-stop technology to increase fuel economy. The combined

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output of the powertrain was ; it was 97% cleaner than the Tier I emissions standard for

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. While the technology has not been applied to diesel engines, the Ford

EcoBoost EcoBoost is a series of Turbocharger, turbocharged, petrol direct injection, direct-injection gasoline engines produced by Ford Motor Company, Ford and originally co-developed by FEV Inc. (now FEV North America Inc.). EcoBoost engines are desi ...

family of gasoline engines has utilized turbocharging in the same manner in the effort to lower emissions while increasing power. In place of a traditional V8 engine, the

Ford Taurus SHO The Ford Taurus SHO (Super High Output) is the high-performance variant of the Ford Taurus. Originally intended as a limited-production model, the SHO would be produced for the first three generations of the model line, from the 1989 to the 1999 m ...

and

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utilize a 365 hp twin-turbocharged V6.

Fate

Although sharing the architecture of the Ford Freestyle, the Meta One was never released as a production vehicle.Neff, John. "UPDATE: Mercury Meta One not happening." ''AutoBlog'', October 20, 2006. February 4, 200

In late 2006, during the development of the Ford Taurus X, prototype development mules were spotted using front bodywork of Meta One prototypes, leading to speculation that the Mercury division would be given a production form of the Meta One, possibly named either the Mercury Monticello or Mercury Magellan. As with its Ford Freestyle predecessor, the Ford Taurus X reached production without a Mercury (or Lincoln Motor Company, Lincoln) counterpart. The Meta One's current location, or if it still exists, is currently unknown.

References

http://www.automobile-catalog.com/car/2005/1899380/mercury_meta_one.html Dimensions and powertrain information

External links

2005 Mercury Meta One Concept at Serious Wheels

Mercury Meta One Concept (Mercuryvehicles.com) (archived link)
{{Mercury Vehicles Concept cars Meta One