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The Trouble with Lincoln

Ford has big plans for Lincoln. But then, Ford has always had big plans for Lincoln. It just never gets around to executing them. This time, though, insist Dearborn insiders, it's different: We really do have big plans for Lincoln.

How big? Well try these soundbites on for size:

"The Lincoln brand is going to be the volume piece of the Lincoln-Mercury franchise." - Mark Fields, executive vice president.

"I'm very interested in Lincoln's evolution as a global brand." - Jim Farley group vice president marketing and communications.

Uh, okay.

First, saying Lincoln is going to be the volume piece of the Lincoln-Mercury franchise is a little bit like saying you're going to be the healthiest guy in intensive care. In product terms, Mercury long ago ceased being anything more than a Ford with different jewelry. There is no compelling reason to buy a Mercury over a Ford; no unique selling proposition. We know it. More importantly, even the most disinterested customers know it. Mercury is a shadow brand, doomed to be locked in an eternal embrace with the Blue Oval until it dies of boredom.

Against that background, it's kinda obvious Lincoln, which at least gets some clear differentiation on products like the MKZ and the newly launched MKS, as well as the stalwart Navigators, is going to outsell Mercury.

Lincoln as a global brand? Now, that's a real stretch. Here's the problem: BMW wasn't built in a day. Back in the early 60s the company was broke, and didn't really discover who it was until the 1970s and the launch of the 2002tii. The sleek, shiny, all-powerful BMW you see today is the product of 35 years of intense focus, consistent development and meticulous execution. Ford has trouble doing anything consistently for 35 months.

(Remember how the Jaguar F1 team was going to be the next Ferrari? When the green cars failed to look like championship winners in three years, Ford got antsy and closed the program down. By contrast until 1999 Ferrari had raced for 16 years without winning the constructors' championship, and 20 years without winning a drivers' title.)

Cadillac has discovered how tough it is to re-establish its credentials as a luxury brand outside the U.S. It's at least 10 years ahead of Lincoln already, but probably has another 15 years of hard graft ahead of it before it can truly run with the Germans and the Japanese. Does Ford have the stomach -- or, more importantly, the money -- for that? I don't see it right now.

And anyway, the new Lincoln MKS is the wrong car.

Why? Because it's built on the wrong vehicle architecture. As it's based on a front drive platform, the dash-to-axle ratio (that is, the distance from the base of the A-pillar to the front axle centerline) just doesn't compute for a luxury car, never mind an American luxury car. Despite the strong Lincoln front end graphic and nice interior -- great work under difficult circumstances from Peter Horbury -- its proportion and stance scream "Japanese".

Mercedes-Benz and BMW -- front engine, rear drive and therefore with a longer dash-to-axle ratio -- have come to define the look of the modern luxury sedan. It's why Toyota has spent billions on making Lexus sedans all rear drive (the lukewarm Camry-based ES350 exists only in the U.S. as a sop to an ageing customer base) and why Audi is spending big on shifting the engines back and the front axles forward on all its new vehicles.

But the problem with the MKS is more than that. It's more, too, than the fact no matter how good it might be, a twin-turbo V-6 is no substitute for a V-8 under the hood in this segment.; It's this: The MKS shares little -- if any -- hardware with any other Lincoln in production today. Given the quality of the rest of the lineup, that's no bad thing. But it's hard to see how the MKS architecture can be scaled to deliver a family of Lincoln models.

BMW basically builds one car a dozen different ways. From 1-series to 7-series, BMWs are all front engined, rear drive cars (even the all-wheel drive X3s and X5s are based off the same fundamental architecture). They can share powertrains, transmissions, and other major components across a large number of models, across the lineup. The MKS is an orphan. It can't be shrunk down to deliver a new MKZ with unique Lincoln DNA; nor can it be pumped up to created a credible, modern, competitive Lincoln Town Car replacement.

What we see with the MKS is the same sort of thinking that got Jaguar into such a mess. With the X-Type based off the Ford Mondeo, the S-Type sharing DEW98 architecture with the Lincoln LS, and the XK and XJ built off reworked versions of two completely different platforms, Jaguar ended up building four completely different cars. It might have looked like a model range, but there were virtually no synergies under the skin. The argument that cost savings could come from horizontal integration -- by sharing the development of common components and architectures with like sized Ford and Volvo models, for example -- only made sense to beancounters in Dearborn.

Making Lincoln a real luxury car brand again is not rocket science. All Ford needs to do is do what Cadillac is doing, what Lexus has done -- follow the lead of BMW and Mercedes-Benz: Build one car several different ways. Lincoln needs a small car. It needs a medium car. It needs a full-sized car. It needs a couple of coupe and wagon variants of those. And it needs a couple of crossovers. But it needs to be able deliver all those with a consistent and uniquely Lincoln DNA that's obvious to customers.