This distresses people inside the Dearborn headquarters and probably makes future customers furrow their brow, but the latest guy in charge of new products for North America, Phil Martens, is a lot more optimistic. It probably helps that one of his previous jobs involved creating the very same Mazda6 during a tour of duty in Japan.
The world should get its second clue as to how flexible the platform is when the first Lincoln model to use it -- a sedan -- is unveiled at the NY auto show in early April. The first clue was of course Detroit auto show-debuted Aviator SUV, which is fairly unsuccessful in its current guise. Lincoln hopes its fortunes will be reversed when the new model arrives in 2006.
Along with those models, Lincoln is also going to take another shot at the luxury pickup market, using the new F-Series as a base for the Lincoln Mark LT. The first effort, the U.S.-only Blackwood, was a thundering failure for many reasons, but most particularly because the pickup bed had a lid that turned it into a trunk for luggage rather than a useable cargo-carrier.
At the moment, it's not known if Ford of Canada will sell the new luxo-truck when it arrives in the next year or so.
After that, who knows where Lincoln will go?
For sure, insiders say, the Lincoln models will have more power and more luxury touches than anything Ford and Mercury create from the same Mazda6 platform, which is pretty much in keeping with the past and present tradition. Lincoln Town Car has a great deal in common with the Ford Crown Victoria and Mercury Grand Marquis, after all.
Whatever the new Lincolns look like, Ford hopes that they will continue to attract younger buyers, the way Navigator does, and sell fewer fleet models.
All we can say for sure about Lincoln is at that the division is actually moving again, after four or five years of spinning its wheels.
