Mall of Georgia Ford
Vehicle Reviews
2010 Mercury Milan
Refined midsize sedan. edited by Ted West
Walk Around
Mercury Milan and Ford Fusion are intimately related, sharing their structure, overall appearance and much of their equipment. But in the styling language of Ford designers, the Mercury is intended to make a dramatically different impression than the Fusion. The Fusion's front fascia is understated, with an all-business grille like a three-blade razor. By contrast, the Milan displays a huge gleaming grin that leads directly up-market toward Lincoln luxury.
Milan and Fusion exhibit the same athletic, ready-to-pounce stance. And no wonder. Both are bona fide world cars, with well-polished over-the-road agility and more than enough performance to make that agility relevant.
The Milan, with its luxury keynotes, is more grandiosely American than the Fusion, its Euro sister, but it still has the crisp look and sporty stance that owe a debt to Ford's profitability designing, building and selling cars worldwide. The Milan's aggressive grille and racecar-like undergrille aren't just for show, either; this is a contemporary mid-size sedan that is meant to devour large portions of interstate and look great doing it.
On its left-rear flank is Ford's capless fuel filler, one of those ideas that's so bright it hurts. Why didn't someone think of this decades ago?
Interior
2010 Mercury Milan
Our Mercury Milan Premier test car with four-cylinder engine was neither the top of the Mercury line nor its bottom, yet its interior felt distinctly like a Mercury, delivering a little luxury at a bargain price.
The leather seating our Milan Premier was first class. The side bolsters and seat cushion lateral support were firmer than the Ford Fusion's. They hold the driver comfortably in place no matter how vigorous the maneuvering gets. Their leather seating panels were interspersed with breathable inserts in the center and back?good when the heat starts to climb.
The rear seats are really two semi-buckets flanked by a slab over the center hump to allow seating for three. Lateral support is minimal for the two primary back seats, while the center seat is for volunteers only. (Milan seats up to five.) On the plus side, the rear combines ample roominess for two with easy ingress and egress.
The black pebble grain dash was classy and rich looking. The instruments, distinguished from the Ford Fusion's by a clever faux three-dimensional appearance with a halo-like illumination of needles and dials, were attractive and effective in all but high daylight. In the latter, however, the speedometer numbers were hard to make out. Instrumentation was reasonably complete and included a water-temperature gauge. The message center below the speedometer can be configured to display average mpg, elapsed time, trip odometer for two different trips and fuel miles to empty. Switchgear is chrome trimmed, substantial and confidence inspiring.
The steering wheel contained cruise control and audio settings, and the adjusters were properly designed so that one doesn't inadvertently brush them while turning, accidentally re-selecting the audio. Excellent. And the optional Sony 12-speaker/six-CD audio with Sirius satellite was equally impressive.
Soft ambient lighting is available, providing cozy pale-blue illumination for the center console cupholders and other tasks that do not require turning on the interior lights.
The trunk offers a generous 11.8 cubic feet of stowage with low lift-over.
Concealed behind the Milan's surrounding interior panels is a full complement of front, side and curtain airbags. The car scored high marks in government crash-safety ratings: a maximum five stars for driver and passenger frontal crashes, five stars for front-seat side crashes, and four stars for rear-seat side crashes and vehicle rollover.
