The trouble with Lincoln and why the LS could have changed things.

Today’s featured vehicle is a bit of a rehash.  Readers who have followed this blog for a while may recall a post back in May entitled “A tale from the fresh trade row: the Lincoln LS”.   That post was about a silver LS that I sold to a young man who had been in the armed forces and who had the task of chauffeuring Generals from place to place in a Mercury Grand Marquis.  My customer came in to the dealership I worked at looking to trade off his F-150 pickup for a rear wheel drive sedan that he could kick up some dust with like he had been trained to do the Mercury Grand Marquis he used to drive.  He could execute all kinds of driving techniques and figured those skills would go to waste in a pickup truck, so he wanted to get himself back behind the wheel of a rear wheel drive sedan that had some power to back it up.  I had been bemoaning the fact that he just barely missed the window of opportunity for me to set him up with a Mercury Marauder, which is a muscled-up version of the Grand Marquis, but ultimately aligned him with a loaded up Silver Lincoln LS, which he happily traded for.  Today we have another Lincoln LS to look at.

The previous post lacked any photo of the Marauder, so I thought I’d throw some in today for you to see.

This is a 2003 Mercury Marauder -the Marauder name plate was revived for the 2003-2004 model years.  What you’re seeing is the Grand Marquis’ evil twin.  The Marauder featured grille work that was color keyed to match the body rather than bright work.

The exterior wears the Mercury waterfall badge, but inside, it features the Mercury God head badges and satin aluminum surface finishes.  Under its hood is a 4.6L DOHC V8 that’s tuned for an output of 302 HP and 318 lb ft of torque.

The rear bumper is embossed with the Marauder name, and it has shiny chrome dual exhaust tips jutting out from under its skirt to let anybody coming up to overtake the Marauder know that they’re not dealing with some ordinary Grand Marquis.  During this car’s production run, and the years following it, this vehicle was considered a real bruiser.  It was a sleeper to those trying to take it on who lacked an eye for the tell tale minutiae that distinguished the Marauder from its more common Marquis and Crown Victoria siblings -once the light turned green, they had a nasty surprise coming.

I’ve driven a Marauder before, and compared to power ratings for vehicles now, with “performance” oriented cars these days easily rising over the 400 HP range, it doesn’t seem like it’s such a big deal on paper.  When you’re behind the wheel of a Marauder though, you know you’re in control of a commanding machine.  Trust me when I say that 302 HP is still plenty of power, and when it’s packed into a staunch and hulking mass of metal like a Grand Marquis, you’ve got plenty to work with.  The Marauder is a tenacious machine, based on the same rugged vehicles that law enforcement has used for years, that the military has used as well to transport its important people around safely -it’s going to take a lot to take down a Marauder.  When you sit in the driver’s seat of a car like this, you feel its mass in terms of brawn instead of just weight.  It’s like wearing a suit of armor -it’s heavy, but it makes you feel indestructible.   A car like this envelopes its driver and instills a sense of might.  It’s a brute, and when you’re in control of it, so are you.

….But that’s not what we’re really here to talk about today, is it?  The Marauder is a wicked car, but we’re here to look at the car that my customer ended up taking home, and the one that I found just a couple weeks ago: the Lincoln LS.

This little beauty caught my eye when I was having my snow tires fitted back onto my Mustang for the season.  While that was going down, I decided to hoof it a mile or two down the road to take care of some shopping and to pick up some Starbucks.  While walking along, I passed this LS sitting in a used car lot.  I knew exactly what I was looking at, because this is the same LS Sport trim as the one I sold to my customer back when I was in the car biz.  More than that, what caught my eye about this LS is the paint color: Dark Cherry Metallic, which is the same Ford color I selected for my father to paint his 1937 pickup truck.  It’s not that the color was available in ‘37, but my dad’s truck is a resto-mod anyway, so I chose a color that was used by the same manufacturer, and more importantly, that I thought would look good on the truck.

Lincoln LS’s were offered for sale from 2000-2006.  They shared a platform with the Ford Thunderbird and the Jaguar S-type, which is not bad company to keep.  The LS hit the ground running when it premiered.  It was made to compete with midsized European sport sedans even as it undercut them price wise.  Critics praised it initially, though noted that it was better suited for touring than sport.

Here, Lincoln had a RWD midsized sedan (whereas the Marauder mentioned earlier in this post is considered a full sized sedan).  They could be had with a 3.0L V6 that made 210 HP or a 3.9L V8 with an output of 252 HP that was bumped up to 280 HP and 286 lb-ft of torque later in the production run.  Because the one we’re looking at today is a 2006, it has the higher performance specs.  The cars handled well thanks to a nearly perfect 50/50 distribution of weight front to back.  The Lincoln LS Sport is a good looking sedan with its color keyed trim, toned, crisp body lines, and crouched, predatory road stance.  At a glance from behind, it registers as a refined, if not almost frumpy sedan, but close in on it a bit, and things sharpen; the wolf begins to shed its sheep disguise to give a glimpse of the LS’s potential.  This design has aged quite well, I’d say.  Especially considering it managed draw me in with its looks from a block away which is no small feat when it’s sitting in a used car lot with a whole bunch of other neat toys, like a Trans Am WS6, some late model Mustangs, and an Audi or two.

Today’s car in particular, with the somewhat hard to find Dark Cherry paint is one that I find quite stunning.  Loaded up with leather, heated front and rear seats, just over 60,000 miles on its odometer, this one was priced at just a hair under $11,000, which I thought was a very good price for it, perhaps even too low.  Somebody else thought so, too, because two days later when I happened by the lot and decided I was going to talk to the guys there to see if they’d let me take it out to play; it was gone.  Somebody else swooped in and snatched it up -and good for them, that’s a hell of a car for that price.

The LS could have lead the way for Lincoln, but there were problems.  In 2000, a V6 could be had new for just over $30,000, and a V8 for right around $45,000.  By 2006, those prices jumped to between $40,000 and $50,000, so some of that price incentive the LS held over its rivals was lost.  In addition to that, somebody at Lincoln decided that the only way buyers could get a manual transmission would be if they chose it as an option on a V6 -it wasn’t even offered on the V8,  If you ask me, that idea is precisely backwards from how it should have been.  The V8 should have had the manual standard instead of the “Select Shift Auto/Manual” transmission they saddled it with.  If you go back to the interior shot, you can see this thing -how you can bump the auto stick over to the right and click it up and down to move through the gears.  What the hell kind of way is that to compete with other sport sedans!

The interior isn't horrible, but materials and arrangement aren’t quite there to match the refined but wolfish exterior of the car.  Still, Lincoln had a good thing here.  The LS Sport trim should have been refined to the 2006 standard and offered much sooner in the production run -this would have required some more investment in the LS.  The LS should have been face lifted and improved at least every two years during its production instead of only once to help it dominate its segment of the market.  Performance and handling should have been enhanced and refined, and the damn stick shift ought to have been the primary offering for the Sport trim with that silly Auto Select Shift crap saved as an option.

Lincoln should have let the  LS lead their way through the early and mid 2000’s.  God knows they weren't investing in updating their Towncar too much, their Mark series bit the dust (though the MK in cars like MKZ lets us know Lincoln isn‘t totally done using it), and they let the Continental go the way of the dinosaurs.  Fine, but replace them with things that are interesting, Lincoln -and while you’re at it, do away with this silly alphabetical naming crap.  LS?  Why not use an actual word or name instead?  MKZ, MKX, MKT?  Really?  Just because the competition is by and large branded with alphabetical designations or alpha-numeric ones doesn‘t mean Lincoln has to follow suit to compete with the likes of the Cadillac CTS, BMW 545i, Mercedes-Benz C320 or C230 or C55.  It just seems like wannabe-ism when Lincoln drops an actual and cool sounding name for a car like “Zephyr” which they owned the rights to, in favor of “MKZ”.
Aside from the name thing, which is irksome to me, but not the biggest deal, the other thing Lincoln did that sabotaged the brand was to marry it too closely to Ford offerings, more or less turning their product lineup into dressed up Fords -that’s was Mercury’s job -and now Mercury is gone after being made redundant by this same practice -lost in the toll of restructuring.  So, why follow this model?

These days, there isn't a Lincoln you can buy that doesn't beat you over the head with the glaring fact that it’s a dressed up Ford product with a little bit of retooling and embellishment done to make it seem like it’s not.  The new MKZ is perhaps the best distanced from this, but you could still pull up at a stop light next to a Ford Fusion and find yourself feeling like an idiot for shelling out so much more money for a car that looks like a blinged out Fusion.  Not that the Fusion is a bad car -it’s not -in fact, it’s a pretty good car.  But a Lincoln shouldn't be a Fusion.

Remember earlier when I was discussing the LS’s wolf-in-sheep’s clothing appeal?  Well, Lincoln has gone and gotten it all backwards, because they went from making a car that was a wolf in thinly veiled sheep skin to making cars that are sheep trying to pull off a wolf costume. Sure, the LS did share a platform with a Ford -the Thunderbird, and a Jaguar, too, but nobody ever would have mistaken any of those cars for each other at a distance, and certainly not up close.  The LS embodied a fork in the road for Lincoln.  They could have turned in its direction and thundered down the intense and winding road of refined performance and styling, but instead they decided not to provoke anybody and settled for a vague sense of luxury and performance; hoping that the safe and dispirited approach would still somehow manage to stir an enthusiasm for the brand.  It was the wrong choice.  This is killing Lincoln as a brand right now.

My parents have an MKZ equipped with all wheel drive, and they absolutely adore that car.  It’s not a bad car, but it’s not setting itself apart in a big enough way to not only save, but to elevate the Lincoln brand name.  God love my parents, but Lincoln needs to find a way to seize younger buyers.  For that matter, who says older buyers wouldn't like to have something more radical?  For Lincoln, it’s time to ditch the idea that they can merely adorn a Ford with a slightly refined skin, a spray of accouterments, and an inflated sticker price.  The luxury of these vehicles can’t just be tacked on -it has to be rooted so deep in their machines that it becomes ingrained in the very ores and fibers that compose the machine.  That luxury can’t just be a lot of blingy baubles and pretty gauges and displays, it has to be present in sensations (visual, tactile, the feel of being thrust through space) that the Lincoln serves up to its drivers.  It needs to saturate the person behind the wheel with force and vigor, and that’s not going to come from throwing a few bucks around to pretty up a Ford.  Lincoln needs to separate itself by a few more steps and come into its own.  I hope that Lincoln pursues this, and that its version of coming into its own involves some wickedly potent hot-rod Lincolns.  I don’t even care if they look completely outlandish (though try to avoid the whale-like appearance of the MKT, or even a bit dowdy -though the designer who handled the new MKZ (Max Wolff) could probably work some magic to make a car that’s refined but ferociously distinct if given the leeway -the back end of the latest MKZ was handled brilliantly -the front end, not so much.

My view on the brand is that Lincoln needs to reshape itself in every way.  Their latest idea is to pretty up their showrooms to draw in buyers.  I think that’s money better spent on redefining their lineup.  Lincoln wants to compete with other luxury car manufacturers, but it is getting left in the dust.  Why on earth would Lincoln bother to design concept cars like the MK9 (it’s worth a google), the Mark X concept, the L2K concept (from the 1990’s),  or the MKR concept, or even the cute-in-a-stodgy-sense-of-the-word C concept hatch (Focus based, but distinct enough for it not to matter) only to set them aside in favor of playing dress up on the cheap with Fords?  I mean, for heaven’s sake, the original Batmobile was based on a Lincoln concept car -clearly it’s in this brand’s blood to make extraordinary things, so why won’t Lincoln just let loose and do it?

The time for half-measures is over, and Lincoln as a brand needs to catch up to its rivals double time before the window on the luxury market closes on them.  To survive, this brand needs to hunt.  Lincoln needs to aggressively pursue, overtake, and devour its competition, and if that means using every dirty little trick in the book to enhance power, appearance, handling, and luxury, then do it already before Lincoln starves.  It’s time to stop trying so hard to be one of the sheep and start taking on the role of the wolf who preys on them instead.