Meteor (automobile)

Meteor was a marque of automobiles offered by Ford Motor Company of Canada from 1949 to 1961 and from 1964 to 1976. It succeeded the Mercury 114, a Canadian-market Mercury based on the Ford, the "114" name being taken from the car's wheelbase.

The Meteor was introduced to complement the Mercury and to give Canadian Mercury-Lincoln dealers a car to sell in the low-price market, against the Canadian Pontiac. Similarly, Canadian Ford dealers offered the Monarch, a line of cars based on the Mercury models, to compete against the Oldsmobile. This was due to the dealer structure in Canada, where smaller communities might have only a single dealer that was expected to carry a full line of models in both the low- and mid-price classes. From 1949–1959, Meteor typically ran fourth in overall sales, behind Chevrolet, Ford, and Pontiac. The make was retired for the 1962 and 1963 model years. In these years the name was used for the Mercury Meteor which was sold in Canada and the United States. From 1970, the Meteor was referred to as the Mercury Meteor.