Paul’s recent foray into the history of Lincoln and the idea of American luxury hit me close to home. I am, after all, on the front lines of Ford’s current effort to revitalize its only other remaining nameplate. Case in point: The 2013 MKZ. The sedan no longer is an (obviously) rebadged Fusion, and it has been selling quite well. With the MKC coming this fall, might we finally see a Lincoln comeback?
I like the new MKZ, but the grille should have vertical bars, not horizontal ones. I really liked the new nose, tail and interior of the 2010-2012 MKZ–it was just that it still looked like a Fusion from the side. And they never, NEVER should have gotten rid of the Town Car. That WAS Lincoln. Yes, it was long in the tooth, but they need a new, three-box RWD top-of-the-line sedan. Think along the lines of the Chrysler 300.
The black cherry paint on the one above is beautiful!
Here is something that we prepared earlier, a perfect 21st century replacement for a Town Car, or a Crown Victoria for that matter, just needs the steering wheel put on the other side …..
+1. Put the ‘Victoria’ in ‘Crown Victoria,’ stat. It’s working for GM.
Realistically, though, the Falcon has a lot of hard-to-rationalise exclusive bits and needs an interior update. Brilliant driver, but too many rough plastics to compete in the $30K+ Stateside market these days.
Seems like Ford’s version of GM’s Holden’s VF Commodore. The OZ markets will get everyday versions while the US market will get a high performance model in the Chevrolet SS. We got the Pontiac G8 which was based off the previous VE model. We get the Holden Caprice as a PPV but I wonder how the market would respond if a civilian version would be introduced. I think there would be some interest in a full size sedan that is competent but not so sports oriented as the SS.
The new model certainly looks better than the old model. Although as you can see from the profile comparison below, the new MKZ seems to bear a striking resemblance to the Cadillac XTS that came out a year before.
The Fusion is a good platform to start with and has been generally well received by the chattering classes hopefully Lincoln will be able to put some swag into it.
Finally someone said what I’ve been thinking for awhile now. The Lincoln and the Cadillac look almost exactly alike.
1980 Seville and 1982 Continental all over again..??
I thought it was a Cadillac when I looked at the photo.
I dislike the MK names and the Oldsmobile grilles on the new Lincolns.
Ditto.
The baleen-whale grilles definitely need to go. Otherwise, their styling is moving in the right direction. They’ve certainly improved since their mid-’00s attempts, which embarrasingly pushed malaise-era square plastic gauges as ‘retro cool’. But they’re still barking up the wrong tree trying to establish that maw as a brand icon. Hope they get there in the end…
http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2013/04/lincoln-mkz-supply-issue-resolved-but-what-about-hermosillos-quality/#comment-2039143
I’m pretty surprised at the workmanship that buyers will accept.
I’m not surprised that it only took a few minutes for you to post that link. Fact is most people will never even notice that roof issue, now how the trim on the door and quarter window line up is another thing.
Did you see the photos of Ford Fusion panel fit issues? I know I would have noticed the window and finish issues of the MKZs. Back in the day, we had a new Porsche 924S in the driveway next to our year old Dodge Lancer ES. The Lancer ES was put together with the attention to detail of the new Lincolns and Fords, and it came into focus when we bought a car for which approximate wasn’t good enough. People shopping in the MKZ price range are likely to have had a similar experience at some point, if they’ve ever owned a badly built car before at all. If I saw that lumpy paint and misaligned glass on a Lexus, I would assume it had been damaged and badly repaired. To see a dealer’s lot filled with that level of work?
As much as I want to like Ford, the build quality absolutely sucks on the new Fusion, and I’m not talking about (arguably) persnickety issues like the finish inside window wells.
Every new Fusion I’ve seen at my local dealer has had misaligned fenders and doors, which is a big deal when the many horizontal body lines styled into these panels come nowhere close to matching up.
Further, the hoods on the Fusion and Focus also seem deliberately designed to be impossible to uniformly match up with their front fascias. One new Focus ST (a car I really, really could see owning as my next vehicle) exacerbated this issue with an inch-long gob of weld or body sealant stuck to the leading edge of the hood, painted bright yellow like the rest of the car. How the ^$&% did that get past QC?
And I won’t even get into the transmission in my 2012 Escape that just needed a valve body rebuild at 17,000 miles (and that I got back from my dealer with a fluid leak… OK, so I’ll get into it a little.)
Ford has problems… and if they aren’t corrected soon, they could be terminal.
A third of new Ford vehicles are sold into fleets. I guess fleet buyers don’t take the time to look at the cars before taking delivery. Retail buyers only have themselves to rely on. They need to seek out the reliability indexes and inspect the cars, because the press doesn’t cover Ford’s quality collapse in much depth and the buff books have no consciences about recommending problematic cars. The Focus wins comparison tests in spite of the miserable dual-clutch automatic and having one of the few adult-unfriendly backseats in the segment. The Fusion usually finishes second, ahead of cars with better as-tested fuel consumption and assembly quality. The 1.6EB Escape is often relatively highly rated in spite of uncompetitive packaging, acceleration and fuel consumption. It may all catch up with Ford eventually, but there will be hundreds of thousands of people learning their lesson the hard way.
The reason Ford sells a lot of vehicles to fleet is because the fleet buyers know that they are far and away the best choice for lowest total cost of ownership despite the fact that the purchase price is more. The bulk of those fleet sales are trucks, heck the Econoline like other vans are likely 95% or more fleet and since Ford sells more than half of the vans in the US it does skew the number to fleet sales.
That too but also fleet buyers have specific usages for vehicles. Police cars, ambulances, etc. do specific things and buyers have certain priorities for buying them. Some manufacturers, usually domestics, cater to that market and while it is relatively small compared to the consumer market, it is still a big market. It would be sort of foolish if all the makers tried to break into the commercial market, Mercedes prestige really isn’t going to carry them with the taxi cab market in the US, it is the opposite of what they experience in Europe and in Africa, where they are home market cars and do build plebian models for those roles. Fleet buyers also like standardization, it is much easier for a taxi company to keep a fleet of Crown Vics that all take mostly the same parts than it is to have different models. Stocking only one kind of oil filter is a good thing. Also, many popular fleet models tend to be old designs. Crown Vics 1979, Econoline vans 1971?
Sorry but the only thing a 2011 Crown Vic had in common with the 79-91 version was the wheel base, body mounting locations, u-joints lug nuts and the fact that some of the box versions shared the 8.8″ ring, pinion and diff and a some internal parts shared between the AOD and the 4R75W. There are 4 distinctly different eras of frames and suspension systems in cars that are considered on the Panther platform.
A 1971 and 2013 Econoline share nothing in common. A 3/4 or 1 ton version of a 1975 and up did share the same rear brake shoes and wheel cyls as a 2005 or older model and that is it. Contrary to popular belief the last redesign was all new even if Ford set out just to put a new body on the old frame, the frames and suspensions got just enough tweaks that nothing other than those brake parts interchange.
Mainly it all comes back to long term costs. A friend of mine is responsible for purchasing the vehicles for a local city. When the Charger came out he bought the salesman’s story that the Charger would save the city money with it’s lower purchase price (around $2K) and better EPA MPG numbers. In the real world it only took about a year and a half to realize that they were much more expensive overall. They got worse MPG with their Hemi, they tended to get wrecked waaaaay more often, they needed more repairs and maintenance, and he needed more vehicles so that there were always enough that weren’t in the shop to fill the need. So the next batch of vehicles he purchased were Tahoes and after running some of them for a year or so he found that they cost less in the long run than the Chargers though still not as economical as the Crown Vics.
His most recent purchases have been Utility and Sedan Interceptors which really surprised me, as he is a dyed in the wool GM guy and at least in the past the GM fleet deals tended to be better than those that Ford gave, so I was really expecting to see some PPVs in the fleet.
Other than diesel Dodges when a 3/4 ton or 1 ton truck is indicated it’s all Ford for the Pickups he buys.
Ford has had some build quality issues for a while. My 06 F-150 is not a well built truck. However after 4 years of ownership it has been the most reliable vehicle I’ve ever owned. So I have found I don’t care about the cosmetic flaws. A Lincoln would be a different story.
In general I’m not a fan of the modern insistance on tight panel gaps. It makes repair unecessarily difficult and expensive and serves no useful purpose (although precision assembly does).
I stopped by the local Ford-Lincoln dealer yesterday after church. In Pennsylvania, dealers are required by law to stay closed on Sunday, so I could look at the vehicles without worrying about being pestered by a salesman.
The panel fit of the Fusions and Focuses was good – certainly competitive for their respective classes. I was particularly interested in the Focus, as we have a 2004 Focus sedan, and it has been a geat car. We’d definitely consider another Focus. But the first of the new Focuses I’d seen at the dealer did have major fit-and-finish issues. Fortunately, the new ones are much improved, so perhaps Ford is addressing the issue.
I hope you’re right about Ford addressing their issues, geeber.
I had the chance this morning to look at a Fusion Energi in my dealer’s showroom, and sure enough, the panel fits were notably better than on the others I’ve seen – damn near perfect, actually! Unfortunately, the fluorescent lights also revealed the flatness of the pearl white paint, as well as copious orange peel (worse on the fenders than the doors, for some reason.) Natural lighting would be more flattering, of course.
Rob, the first Focuses I saw were pretty bad. They had some major fit-and-finish issues – the type that even people not particularly interested in cars might notice. Between that and the troubles with the transmission, there was no way we would have considered buying one, even though I really liked the car.
Orange peel in the paint seems to be a common problem. I’ve noticed it on some Hondas and Toyotas, too.
I’d consider a Focus now, although an “insider” on a Ford message board has said that the current transmission may be replaced by a more conventional unit when the car receives its next makeover.
Nice looking car, but Lincoln’s got much bigger problems than styling.
On the one hand, Mulally’s One Ford is taking the Ford brand upmarket, so Lincolns have to compete with Fords in Titanium trim sitting in the same showroom. On the other hand, brands like Mercedes and BMW are moving downmarket. A $35,000 Lincoln just doesn’t impress the neighbors as much as a $35,000 Mercedes, even if the Mercedes shares an engine and/or platform with Renaults and Nissans.
And there’s no telling what the future holds for any of these luxury brands. Things like leather seats, active suspensions, high-tech variable valve timing and touchscreen dashboards are becoming standard equipment on even the most affordable cars. How much markup will the three pointed star justify on a 1.6 liter E Class that’s sold alongside FWD subcompacts with 3-cylinder engines?
By the time Ford makes progress rebuilding Lincolns lineup and reputation, will any brand short of Bugatti still be able command higher prices just because of the name?
The fact that they are on the same lots as Fords now is one of the many reasons they should not have dropped Mercury. The price of a Ford bumping up against a Lincoln isn’t that new either. Years ago when the wife decided she wanted a SUV instead of a minivan I spent some time on-line comparing the Explorer, Mountaineer and Aviator. The base prices followed as you would expect with the Mercury falling between the others. However when you loaded them up the way we wanted the Ford in Limited trim was like $44K while the Merc in Premier trim with everything was $40,120 just barely above the Lincoln’s $39,995 base price.
The dirty little secret of Mercury was that, comparably equipped, its cars were within $50 or so of the facing Ford models. As an example, while Fusion has three trim levels, Milan had two that exactly duplicated the top two Fusions, maybe with some included equipment (like leather interior) that justified a higher base price. By the time you added the equipment to a Fusion, the two were pretty much the same price.
I suspect this made it easy to discontinue Mercury, because it didn’t return more variable profit than selling the same car with a Blue Oval badge, so the decision came down to were there enough incremental sales from Mercury (i.e., Mercury buyers who just wouldn’t even consider a Ford) to justify the fixed costs of designing slightly different front and rear caps. I suspect once Dearborn was honest with itself the answer came back no.
And as far as keeping the Town Car around, the dirty little secret there was that at least by the early 00s Town Car sales were around 90% fleet (i.e., airport livery services), just as Crown Vic sales were 90% cops and cabs. Grand Marquis was the only Panther that sold in decent numbers to the general public by this point.
I hope that by making it less obvious that a Lincoln is a Ford in drag Ford can resurrect Lincoln from the mistakes of the last 40 years, but we will see I guess …
Actually in many cases as closely equipped as you could make them the Mercury was actually priced less than the Ford. The Mercury usually had extras you couldn’t get at any price in the same Ford. For example I’ve had a number of Panthers over the years. The top of the line every option offered 92 Crown Vic did not have the carpeted and insulated panel on the underside of the rear package shelf that the bottom of the line 93 Grand Marquis did. Ditto for the Tempaz and Taurbles from the same era.
Lincoln, under current Ford management…is Dead Brand Rolling.
It’s Big Al’s vision – “One Ford.” He didn’t/doesn’t understand the idea of separate brands for separate segments of the marketplace. He comes from a world of INDUSTRIAL GOODS – his comments at the time of his arrival at Ford were to the effect that Boeing had only one brand, why should not Ford?
He doesn’t fully understand the style/social purpose of automobiles – neither do I, but I recognize it. A person buying a Jaguar isn’t buying transportation – he/she is buying a BADGE; an ACCESSORY. This is what people in his/her world HAVE when they go to the club; to the mountains; to the charity event.
A Ford, no matter how well equipped, does not have that cachet. Because Fords are also sold as inexpensive mass-market cars.
Anyway…for skill or for luck, Big Al helped Ford dodge the bullet four years ago; and for better or worse he’ll be riding that horse to the end. So…his way will be adopted; and I’m certain that inside of four years Lincoln will either be closed; be sold to the Chinese; or be a car line within Ford.
Personally I do not think the MKC is going to do any good for the Lincoln name. It should have been released with the Mercury badge when intended with the new Focus rather than going back for a few changes to become a Lincoln.
Check out the size difference of the BOF Explorer and new Escape! He the Explorer, a damned fine vehicle from 07-10, has more room and definitely more capable. Escape exists in the same price spectrum of the old Explorers.
I regret passing on my dad’s former company car, a 2008 Explorer Eddie Bauer V8 4WD. Had the Outback at that time, Explorer would have served well for a long time with minimal use. He bought a mustang GT and F150, both 5.0s in matching white.
I agree with other posters in that it would make a nice Mercury.
In my opinion, if you want to compete with the likes of BWM, then do it. Make it a driver’s car with RWD. See Cadillac CTS for inspiration.
Just a note on my own experiences. My 2011 Ford Fiesta has been a great little car. The powershift had to be reflashed, but since then has been good. Only time will tell if it holds up for the long hall, but for 24,000 miles it’s been one of the best cars I’ve ever owned considering the price. And I’ve owned a lot of cars both old and new. Again, just my experience with a newer Ford and the powershift.
Glad to hear it! I asked the service writer about the DCT’s reliability when I had my Escape in for its tranny rebuild, and he said he hasn’t seen any come in for major problems since the reflash was released.
He added that customers do occasionally ask about the shift characteristics, though, since it can be a bit different than a traditional automatic.
I like the look of the new Lincoln, but it’ll take a long time to restore the brand’s reputation. To me, it seems the brand lived off the town car for the last 20 years. I rarely see any continentals, marks, navigators, etc from the 90s/early 00s. The newer lincolns of the last 5ish years are sad exuses for luxury cars, as they differed so little from their ford counterparts. It also doesn’t help that the Fords that lincolnsare based on are very good cars themselves. This lincoln MKZ is a good step, but they still have a long walk to go before the next generation of buyers will respect and consider lincoln.
Also, since we’re discussing lincoln, I wish they never dropped the LS from the early 2000s. That car was a great step in the right direction, and if ford kept improving it and investing in it, it would have been a great competitor to both cadillac and the Germans.
Ford would have had to do a ton of improving to the LS to keep it around, while on the surface they were pretty nice cars their reliability and durability was terrible and they are a PITA and expensive to fix. The fact that the reborn T-bird was based on them is why there is not one of those T-birds in my fleet. All in all I’d say they did more to damage the Lincoln brand than help it, particularly when you consider that they were the end of real names and the predecessor to the MKWTF? designations.
Plus the LS looked like a Diamante
I may be biased saying this but the MN12/FN10 platform should have just been improved and modernized like the Fox and Panther were, rather than create the similarly laid out but completely different DEW98 from scratch. That could have carried a Lincoln flagship through the 00s, would have opened the window for affordable/obtainable service parts, fit more conventional engines and transmissions and minimize development cost… Oh well, I can dream all day about that
The 3.9 LSs are a pain to work on. I had one regular customer with one and most of the issues related to the engine area. Aside from the difficulty of the labor, explaining to customer why parts are 3x the cost of his TC is another story. Among the bigger issues, the hydraulic system often gives trouble which that cars uses two pumps one on each side of the engine, one drives the power steering and the other drives the fan (which like Lexus is fluid driven not electric). The 3.9s like to get hot so you have to keep on top of the water pump and thermostat. Cam cover gaskets and spark plug tube seals have been another area of distress lots of LS running on 6-7 cylinders because of fluid leakage. Also the early 5R55N transmissions were plagued with electrical gremlins. Solenoid packs are bad just like on the early Chrysler Ultradrives.
I do not mind cars that need a little extra attention, but when the attention becomes difficult it becomes a pain. Thinking of a recent CC post about the K-car, 80s Jag, and Millenia in the driveway I look at it like this. The K-car is the easiest and cheapest to maintain so I would make quick work of keeping that car roadworthy. The Millenia, if it has had a decent life, is not too terribly difficult to keep going as long as nothing major goes. The Jag would be the most difficult as it is the most unusual of the three in design and layout, of course parts would be most expensive and probably would require the most time on average for a given repair. In the hands of a proper mechanic and an owner that takes of it and drives it appropriately it could be made to be reasonably reliable although again it would be the hardest of the three.
The LS and DEW98 platform were good ideas in theory, but their execution was never truly competitive with the intended competition, and in the end were only terrible wastes of money and engineering resources at a time when Ford was severely strapped for both.
Not sure if this MKZDH!#@$ is supposed to attract the TC’s livery market, but the rear-seat headroom is insufficient. Sat in one at a car show, with high hopes, but no excuse for a car this big to be crowding what’s left of my hair.
We’ve been happy with the wife’s 06 Fusion – first year for that design, bought used – but it sounds like the new one is a work in progress.
No worries, just hold out for the new ’15 ABC123WTFBBQ.
My buddy and I checked out a row of 2013 MKwhateverz yesterday and came away unimpressed. The car looks ungainly and fat in the middle. The push button gear selector is corny and makes the center console look plain and bare. The center stack with it’s clone look alike capacative touch buttons just doesn’t look luxury car and overall the interior looks like it belongs in a lower priced car. Even the head room in the back seat is poor and legroom seems lacking with the front seat back only half way. The Oldsmobile inspired grille seems forced and the only interesting angle of this car is the back. The fact that more than half of the cars on the lot were 4 bangers was deplorable. How the mighty have fallen!
I’m just looking forward to Lincoln’s MK-whatever of the new Escape. I had a 2013 2.0 Turbo Escape as a rental over Christmas and put about 4k miles on it in 2 weeks. Simply an amazing vehicle. I have a Volvo V70R and the Escape felt about 90% as quick, and was amazingly almost as stable racing through mountainous highways, and it did much better through mud and gravel roads than any CUV has a right to. My only real complaints were slightly too much wind noise from the mirrors, and the interior looks a little too spaceship for me, both things I think a Lincoln version would remedy.
I think Lincoln is pretty much dead. There is nothing in that lineup that would make me pay more for the Lincoln version over a Ford version. The current Fusion is a pretty looking car and can be had for a good price with all the bells and whistles so why would I buy a Lincoln? Plus Lincoln is still trying trying to sell cars on Luxury and comfort alone. But why spend spend $40,000 or $50,000 on a Lincoln when I can get comfort and luxury in a $25,000 Fusion/Accord/Camry/Sonata? Once Lincoln could advertise luxuries such as remote entry, power locks/windows but now you can get a Versa for under $16,000 with power windows/locks/remote entry etc.
Next is the fact Lincoln dropped all its nameplates for letters. What the heck is an MKZ? Lexus, BMW,Benz, Jag etc had letter and number names for their cars for decades(in the case with Lexus, they started with LS, GS and ES)
But more crucial, is the fact that Lincoln has no car that inspires performance or the WOW factor.
Caddy is reinventing itself to add performance and Lincoln should address this. From the 1980’s until 1992, Lincoln had a car called the Mark 7 LSC. It was sporty, had all the bells and whistles and had good performance for the time and best of all it was good looking(especially the 1992 LSC which was in all black) It was more then a gussied up T-Bird and it looked the business. The only thing I found not to like on that model is that it lacked a stick but it was a wonderful car.
There is no Lincoln that “wows” at this stage. It is time for Ford to get serious with its Lincoln Division. Enough with the smoke and mirrors and the Cimarronization of Lincoln. Today’s Lincoln buyer wants performance and striking good looks, not better leather seats