The Town Car needs to go…. ten years ago.

Lamborghini Z,

What 50s thing? If you mean aiming at 50+ year olds, I hardily agree.

Get Real,

When you own an LS and have time to actually live with it. You notice something. You don’t really notice the hard materials as hard cheap materials, but as differing surface qualities that give the car an ambiance that errs toward sportiness and not pure plush. Some guys really don’t go for padded everything. We do like tough to the touch surfaces now and then, even in our luxury cars.

I won’t go into the practical aspects of it right now though like cleanliness, material longevity, and cost management.

You may not care for it, but that is your loss. I don’t mind it and would not miss it one way or the other.

I’m inclined to call the FX/Murano twins, alhough most publications say they’re cousins. But, they’re both GOOD cars. They’re not, however, “built on completely different platforms.’

R-Head: confusing an “ES” with a camry is like meeting robert and thinking he’s bob.

Sit inside the recently deceased LS….feel all the hard craplastic interior surfaces.

Thanks to cheap switchgear, door panels and carpets only a Taxi Driver will respect a Lincoln.

In marketing, “Upscale” refers to a higher pay scale , “Upmarket” means the same thing.

I personally think it’s pathetic to need 3 divisions to sell the same vehicle in slightly altered forms, but personal opinions do not equate to sales.

Blakkar :I liked the Mark VIII. The guy that owned the first paper I worked for had one. It was about the nicest car in town …it was a small town.

What happened to Lincoln? At least the cornhuskers woke up

My dad’s last car was a 1987 Lincoln Mark VII LSC. It was a great “muscle luxury car”.

Anyway, I agree that the VIII was, if not ugly, then odd looking. But they do seem to be reasonably solid even after all this time but I won’t lay odds on them.

Lincoln has been treated poorly by FORD. The LS was easily one of the best cars FORD ever put out. It was a re-skinned Jag s-type, but it was still great. It was the best thing they got from Jaguar, by far.

It was expensive to build and for some reason FORD did not see fit to upgrade and sell up with that car. It was easily worth $45-50K but they were trying to sell it for under $40K. Plus the engine should have made at least 300hp not 250hp. But they simply killed it. That was the car that really could have helped turned FORD around if they really pushed it….

But again, Truck and SUVs took precedent and even their best cars were made to suffer, to the detriment of all.

I agree with posters above that Lincoln needs to focus on competing with the Tier 2 brands like Infiniti, Acura, and even Volvo before taking on the BMW, Lexus, M-B, Audi crowd. Focus on good smaller cars that people will want, get them on the street and build positive brand awareness like Infiniti did with the G35.

First things first, they need to build the MKR and a true MKS.

It would be the “Phaeton syndrome” all over again. Americans didn’t want a $70k Volkswagen, and I bet perceptions among U.S. consumers and Lincoln are similar. Even after a redesign, the Navigator has continually lost ground to the Escalade. Lincoln is there to out-luxury and out-class Fords, not the premium luxo brands.

But lets be honest, FORD needs to secure itself before really moving forward and with that recent bet against it’s own survival, FORD doesn’t have time or money to spend on going upscale for now.

I would love to see a new Continental Sedan and a “Lincoln Number” (Mark VIII was the last one) coupe both happily over $60K but that will have to wait for a while. Think A BMW 7 and 6 series but much less expensive at the upper range.

But one thing I’d like to hear is what is FORD really wanting to do in the future. Where do they want to go? What do they want to achieve? How do they intend to do it and why?