It's amazing how far ahead of its time this aircraft was. A stretched version with more economical powerplants could have been a huge success just like the CRJ-200 was. But with high oil prices and the Mercure program struggling to find any customers, I can see why Dassault abandoned this program.
Good points. My understanding is that turboprops were almost invincibles in the 1970's and 1980's, and that even in the 1990's and beyond, Bombardier and Embraer still had some difficulties cornering the market - when ATR survived against all odds.
Turboprops vs jet was, and still is, a pitched battle. Jets are quiet and fast and sexy; but fuel costs and CO2 emissions favors ATR, even today. ATR has proven extremely resilient, even before they became part of Airbus.
Mercure, Concorde and Corvette should never have happened. They were three costly mistakes by the French government, which should never have funded them. Admittedly, Concorde was prestige so ok. But Mercure and Corvette were criminal idioties.
Corvette, because it ran head-on into the Falcon 20.
What was Aérospatiale thinking ?
Mercure, because it ran into the nascent Airbus airliner business, in the days of Concorde commercial failure.
What was Dassault thinking ?
By 1976 France had three awful airliner commercial failures on its hands: Concorde, Mercure, A300. They cost french taxpayers an arm, a leg and a few testicles...
We can thanks the late Frank Borman, former astronaut turned Eastern CEO, to have rescued Airbus in 1977. Also MDD stupidity not going 747SP with the DC-10, with two engines instead of three. The A300 with 260 pax and two engines was a perfect DC-8-63 replacement and also a gap filler, between 727/727/DC-9 and DC-10 / L-1011/ 747SP / 747.