The Lincoln Concept C small luxury car offers a hint of what's to come from the Ford brand.
Ford Motor Co. has promised its frustrated dealers that it will invest $1 billion in a bid to make the struggling Lincoln brand competitive, with an assortment of new products coming to market by 2014.
Once locked in a bitter, ongoing battle with Cadillac for dominance in the American luxury market, Lincoln has become little more than an afterthought in recent years. It currently holds less than 1% of the overall U.S. market, despite the addition of new and updated models like the MKS sedan, and MKX and MKT crossovers. At the current sales pace of barely 7,000 vehicles a month, Lincoln could end the year with volumes of less than a third of luxury market leaders BMW and Lexus.
The “question is whether Lincoln will be viable,” IHS analyst Rebecca Lindland told the Detroit News, which revealed the new management commitment to Lincoln.
That was a relatively charitable way of putting things. Earlier this month, General Motors CEO Dan Akerson suggested Lincoln is “over,” and that Ford might as well “sprinkle holy water over it.”
But a spokesman for the suburban Detroit maker insisted Ford is “fully committed” to saving Lincoln, hinting there are new products in the pipeline. That’s the message Ford management, including CEO Alan Mulally, gave to some of Lincoln’s most important dealers during a conference in Detroit this month.
What those products are Ford isn’t saying, though analyst Lindland anticipates Lincoln will add a luxury compact sedan, similar but decidedly more up-market than the mainstream Ford Focus. She also has a premium midsize crossover, much like the new car-based Ford Explorer, on her schedule, along with updated versions of most of the current Lincoln line-up.
At the same time, Lindland predicts both the big MKT crossover and Navigator SUV will be dropped, probably by 2016.
Ford officials readily admit they have a problem with Lincoln, and the situation is all the more dire after the maker abandoned its Mercury brand, which helped prop up Lincoln showrooms.
Complicating matters, Ford is telling Lincoln dealers they need to upgrade their showrooms, at an average cost estimated at $1 million per dealership, to adopt a more modern, uniform brand appearance.
During the Dearborn meeting, Ford assured dealers it “is fully committed to the Lincoln brand,” Bob Tasca, a Rhode Island dealer and chairman of the Lincoln Mercury Dealer Council, told the News.
What remains to be seen, industry sources caution, is just how far Ford will go with its new Lincoln products. While recent models, like the newly-update MKX, have put a premium on high-tech features such as MyLincolnTouch, critics contend the latest Lincolns are still just rebadged versions of more mainstream Ford products.
But after having sold off all of its foreign-based luxury brands, such as Jaguar and Land Rover, senior Ford managers, including marketing czar Jim Farley, have told TheDetroitBureau.com that they are fully committed to not just maintaining but growing the Lincoln brand.