Kenny Brown Marauder S

Kenny Brown Marauder S Kenny Brown Marauder S
Specialty File From the April 2003 Issue of Car and Driver

You know what a "gimme" is, right? It's a freebie, the short putt credited without trying, a scoring gift. If you're Ferrari driver Michael Schumacher and you've already clinched the Formula 1 championship, the gimme is to lift off the gas on the final straight and let your teammate blow by for the win.

If you're Ford, your gimme to the aftermarket is the Mercury Marauder.

Why? The Marauder is a 302-hp, $34,495 souped-up version of the V-8-powered, rear-drive Mercury Grand Marquis that's supposed to be a real terror on the road. Says brand manager Philip Smoker: "The new Marauder is a true four-door muscle car—a black shark in a sea of minnows." Hey, easy on the caffeine, Phil, because a Honda Accord V-6 outruns it to 60 mph—getting there in 7.0 seconds to the Marauder's 7.5. Nothing against Honda, but that's like wrestling your little sister— and losing. We bet every single Marauder owner will utter—at least once—the phrase, "Hmm, this thing feels pretty soft, I wonder if a couple of spark-plug wires fell off."

In fact, we're betting that many of the roughly 3000 Marauder owners will be looking for some mo' juice. Kenny Brown, the noted tuner of Mustangs and other Fords, is betting on it. He won't be surprised if his new $16,800 Marauder performance package—it includes new brakes, a lowered suspension, and most important, 158 more horses—becomes his bestselling kit. And since Ford Racing, the blue oval's aftermarket parts division, does not currently offer any worthwhile performance enhancements tailored to fit the Marauder, Brown has—for now—a captive market. He didn't say it, but we could almost hear him thinking, "Show me the money!"

It's fitting that Brown is the orchestrator of this Marauder transformation. He was the original sculptor of the Lounge Lizard C/D project car (November 1998), a supercharged, blacked-out version of the Crown Victoria (Ford's version of the Mercury Grand Marquis) that we believe was the forerunner to the Marauder.

Since we published the Lounge Lizard story, Brown has built 35 similar cars, but since the Marauder and the Crown Vic/Grand Marquis use different engines, he had to gin up a new kit for the Marauder. For the Lizard and its SOHC 16-valve V-8 engine, Brown used a Roots-type supercharger that is sold by Ford—through Ford Racing—and sits in the vee of the engine. Ford Racing doesn't sell a Roots-type blower for the Marauder's DOHC 32-valve, 4.6-liter V-8. Even if it did, Brown says the Roots blower wouldn't fit underneath the Marauder's hood.

So Brown developed a centrifugal blower for the Marauder that's bolted to the front of the engine and driven by the accessory-drive belt. There are more than 150 pieces to his new engine kit, he says, including an air-to-air intercooler and larger fuel injectors. The maximum boost is a modest 7.0 psi, and the engine internals remain stock.

It's a slick, lively engine, with a powerful rush to redline and a wonderful V-8 roar. Since a centrifugal blower tends to work more like a turbocharger and provide the most benefit at higher rpm, Brown also included a shorter final drive (4.10:1 versus 3.55:1) to further increase throttle response and acceleration. The Marauder's four-speed automatic transmission is unchanged.