One of the foundation principles of journalism is to comfort the afflicted — and afflict the comfortable.
Ford Motor is feeling pretty comfortable these days. Its cars are selling, its debt is shrinking, and its executives are treated with the kind of reverence and adulation usually reserved for the likes of Mark Zuckerberg or Justin Bieber.
So if Ford is comfortable, how should it be afflicted? Did I hear somebody say Lincoln?
With Mercury gone, former Lincoln-Mercury dealers have gone into a cold sweat. They have been asked to upgrade their service, replace their old L-M signage, and hope they aren’t among the 200 or so L-M dealers that Ford wants to close.
The squeeze is coming because Ford sells fewer than half as many Lincolns as it did a decade ago. From its peak as the best-selling luxury brand of 1998, Lincoln has fallen to near the bottom of the ranking.
Due to a lack of funds, or imagination, or both, Ford failed to invest in Lincoln when it was still feeding those fancy European marques: Jaguar, Land Rover, Volvo, and Aston Martin.
Those marques have all been dispatched to foreign owners, and their departure has exposed the shortcomings of Lincoln for all to see.
Today, Lincoln sells two vehicles with actual names — Town Car and Navigator — and four with initials that only Ford’s advertising agency can recognize: MKS, MKT, MKX, and MKZ. All six have one thing in common: They share their architecture with a car from the Ford model lineup. The Town Car is twinned with the old Ford Crown Victoria, the Navigator with the Ford Expedition, and so on.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with sharing platforms across car lines; economies of scale are how you make money in the car business. Audi and Lexus have made a fine art of it of turning ordinary Volkswagens and Toyotas into desirable purchases.
The secret is to disguise the relationship between the cheap brand and the expensive and convince buyers they are getting something special at the higher price point.
That’s a skill that historically has eluded Ford. In its heyday, GM pulled up to five vehicles off a single platform (or could until Fortune’s famous 1983 cover of the lookalike cars) but Ford has always had trouble with Lincoln, and before that Mercury, and way before that, Edsel.
Fixing Lincoln was always one of those things — like closing the federal deficit or calling your mother in law — that was easy to postpone. About once a decade, Ford decides that this time it is really going to do something. Then there is a change at the top or the economy goes south, and fixing Lincoln gets kicked down the road.
Now the jungle drums are beating again. Executives promise that this time they really mean it. Future product plans are leaked, revealing upgrades and design changes. What’s lacking so far is the home run, the one feature or car that will set Lincoln apart from the pack.
Which brings us to the MKZ, Lincoln’s version of the Ford Fusion. Their profiles are identical. Most of the differentiation is seen in the rear tail lamps and Lincoln’s signature bow-wave grille up front. The interior feels more Lincolnesque — refined and functional.
MKZ’s come in two flavors: standard and gas-electric hybrid. Both carry the same base price of $34,330. The standard MKZ is powered by a 3.5 liter V-6 that puts out 263 horsepower. It’s EPA-rated at 18 mpg city/27 mpg highway.
Those aren’t bad numbers, but they can’t put a patch on the hybrid. Its 2.5 liter inline four-cylinder engine combined with electric motor produces 191 horsepower and carries an EPA rating of 41 mpg city/36 highway. I averaged 36.7 over a 100-mile stretch of country roads and fast-moving highways on a run from New York City to northwestern Connecticut. With the average price for a gallon of gas north of $3.25, those are nice numbers.
Thanks to Lincoln’s aggressive pricing, the additional fuel economy costs you nothing. The standard and the hybrid carry the same base sticker price of $34,330. What you give up is performance. With more weight and less motor, the hybrid can’t come close to matching the standard’s 7.1 second zero-to-sixty time.
In truth, neither car is going to help return Lincoln to luxury leadership. Both are ending the end of their lifespan in their current configuration; a major redesign is due next year.
More importantly, they don’t tell you what kind of person drives a Lincoln. Is it someone special who aims for the peak of American luxury? Or is it just an ordinary person who doesn’t want to be seen in a Ford?
That’s what a Mercury was and we’ve seen what happened to Mercury.