New Lincoln Isn't Your Father's Lincoln, And That's Mostly A Good Thing
It was a sound idea and long overdue that Ford (F) decided to phase out Mercury and put more resources into the Lincoln brand. That said, the Lincoln brand is a fixer-upper, too.
Lincoln hit its peak 20 years ago with record U.S. sales of 231,660 vehicles in 1990, according to Automotive News, versus just 82,847 in 2009. Through May, Lincoln's 2010 sales were up about 12 percent to 37,444, according to AutoData. However, the entire U.S. market was up an average of around 17 percent, so that's not the good news you might have thought.
Back in 1990, analysts were watching to see if the brand-new Japanese luxury brands, Lexus and Infiniti, would run the German luxury imports out of business in the U.S. market. Would Americans even accept the idea of a Japanese luxury brand? Would they continue to pay extra -- a lot extra -- for European "tradition?"
It turns out, the German brands bent but didn't break. It was the U.S. luxury brands, Cadillac and Lincoln, that have struggled since the advent of the Japanese.
The Germans recovered after Mercedes-Benz (DAI) introduced the U.S.-built M-Class SUV in 1997. BMW and other luxury brands, including Lexus and Infiniti, followed suit with SUVs, but also stayed strong in cars. In retrospect, Lincoln and Cadillac achieved the worst of both worlds. They were late to the party with luxury SUVs, and then became overly dependent on them when SUVs fell out of favor a few years ago. (It's fair to point out that Lexus may have gone a little overboard in trucks, too.)
Don't get me wrong. Lincoln has some great vehicles on sale already, and Cadillac is well on its way to turning itself around -- more so than Lincoln.
Lincoln's top sellers are the MKZ, formerly called the Zephyr, and the MKX crossover. Both are attractive and solidly built. However, the Lincoln brand image hasn't kept up. On the road, people still associate the brand with a giant truck, the Lincoln Navigator, and a giant car, the Lincoln Town Car.
Lincoln complicated matters by changing its names. Over the last few years, it changed the Zephyr to the MKZ, and shortened a bunch of names that started with "Mark" by switching to "MK." Even people like me who are supposed to have this stuff memorized have a hard time keeping straight the MKZ, the MKX and the MKT crossover.
The net result is that Lincoln's brand image is a work in progress. Lincoln has its first-ever "C"-segment car in the works, which is named the Lincoln C Concept, appropriately enough. Its styling and product concept are a complete non sequitur for the Lincoln brand, despite an effort to include Lincoln styling cues like the front grille.
What consumers will make of it is anybody's guess, but they sure won't confuse it with any existing Lincoln, and I guess that's the whole idea. However, it's going to take a few years for consumers to get straight what exactly a Lincoln is supposed to be.
Photo: Ford