Editing Mercury Montego (section)

=== Exterior ===
[[File:California - USA (3158684209).jpg|thumb|left|2005 Mercury Montego, rear]]
As with the Grand Marquis, the 2005 Montego was offered solely as a four-door sedan.  The tallest Mercury sedan in over 50 years (over five feet tall), the Montego was only two inches lower in height than a [[Jeep Cherokee (XJ)|Jeep Cherokee]] SUV.  

While visibly sharing much of its exterior with its Ford Five Hundred counterpart, the third-generation Montego held several distinct design features.  In Mercury design tradition, the Montego was styled with a vertical waterfall-style grille with satin aluminum exterior trim (limiting chrome to the roofline).<ref name="montegointro" />  Exclusive to the Montego, HID headlamps and LED taillamps were standard equipment (the latter, the largest array of LED lights on any Ford vehicle worldwide).<ref name="montegointro" />   

Ford chief designer George Bucher said: "it was a challenge to sculpt a Ford-styled body around a Volvo chassis, and added that designers used what he calls plainer surfaces with taut lines to give the car a modern look without losing its passenger-car proportions."<ref name="Volvostruc2">{{cite web
  | title = 2006 Ford Five Hundred
  | publisher = Larry Edsall, Twincities.com
  | url = http://cars.twincities.com/reviews/ford/five-hundred/2006}}</ref>