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Comments
Canadian cars would often have different names on the exact copy of an American car. Or the Canadian Mercury pickup which was nothing more than the F100 with Mercury badges. The Merkur rebadge was a Ford Scorpio. The height of this was the Dodge Neon/Plymouth Neon.,.let's not even bother renaming the little sucker.
Rebadging can be like the Fusion/Milan (some trim differentiation but nothing a body shop couldn't switch out in minutes), or it can be like taking an Opel from Europe and calling it a Saturn here. WIKI is getting b-e mixed up with platform sharing mixed up with platform engineering. Platforms are meant to be flexilbe and can spawn many sub-versions. Or you can use the exact same architecture under completely different bodies. But that is not a rebadge. Rebadge came from quick and dirty rebadging. Taurus to MKS is not that.
Got me there! Rechecked and article says 60 Quart
I'll have to look at interiors to see if guage cluster borrowed. I seem to remember someone ragging on the mks because it had the same guages as a Focus. I figured that was BS, Lincoln would not borrow from a Focus, would they?
Yep. 10 out of 10!
I dont wanna argue these definitions anymore. They is what they is. b-e, p-e, p-s whatever. One is 'based on' the other. If the other is a Jaguar, so much the better.
Here's my idea. Go back to the future and do it like the S-Type/LS pair.
IOW, design the best, strongest, most "luxurious" (or sportiest if desired) platform you can for the Lincoln. Then dumb it down and cheapen it for the Ford. As opposed to designing the cheap one first and trying to add-on.
EcoBoost will certainly get the car moving better. Try driving a naturally aspirated Subaru Legacy and follow that wth the turbo version for an idea Gas mileage, though, wont be much, if any, better and will almost certainly be worse if u dig into that turbo too much.
An adult AND 2 car seats in the back??? Man, that's a big back seat. That is the exact reason I got a Navigator rather than an Aviator. Just could not seat 3 comfortably in the back of the Aviator. For this application: "Have you driven a Grand Marquis ... lately." ?
The Jag owners! Cant please everybody!
The Navigator would be an option but our house is 60 years old and the garage just isn't tall enough. That's one of the many drawbacks of living in the Boston area. To be able to afford a house in a suburb with a decent school system means having to make sacrifices in certain areas.
At this point I'd say the plan is probably to keep Ford on the D3 platform for the near future and to use GRWD for Lincoln and Ford sports cars. If the platform is designed right it can produce sedans, convertibles and coupes.
Fooled you! Reverse Badge Engineering? Maybe that's the secret? :shades:
Actually yes! We fit 6 people in the car - 4 adults squeezed in the back seat. I remember riding in pre-98 “square” TC – three people sitting comfortably in the back without touching each other. Nowadays cars like Taurus and Avalon would pass for full-size. But that’s okay – it will force some people to go to gym.
Many contemporary cars look a lot alike. In some ways, the Jaguar XF resembles the MKS or vice versa because of rooflines, door cut outs and so on. Ford did a good job of separating the looks of the Taurus and MKS (thank the universe), because a Taurus-looking anything is doomed. Still, if you look you can see the Taurus presence in the tall and chunky stance, and the short wheelbase and long overhangs. Not much they could do short of chassis changes to modify that.
That bothers the hell out of me, sorry to say. It speaks of "simple, cheap and effective", which are not things to rave about on a nice car! I expect to see that on a Focus, maybe even a Mustang, and possibly the Fusion - I do NOT expect it on the Taurus and absolutely recoil at seeing it on a Lincoln. For what I pay for the Lincoln, I do not expect to see simple and cheap. It's one of the details that Ford doesn't think the buyer sweats, but is dead wrong on. Ok, most women don't care or don't know, and that's half the population, but any car guy who takes pride in a luxury marque will care. Is that enough of the buying public to go to the $5 expense to put struts under that hood? On Lincolns, yes.
I would never again buy ANY mid-size, near luxury or luxury car with a prop rod. After having a hood that just opens and closes, with no rod to thread or scratch, that's a corner they can cut for another customer. VW got rid of all prop rod use years ago. Ford could at least eliminate them for Lincolns. Not asking much.
An MKS Gore Edition wouldn't be a bad thing, given Cadillac is already planning a 4 cylinder model a la Audi A4/Acura TSX, AND an all electric one a la Volt. Lincoln needs to broaden its appeal soon, not only to the market that wants hybrids, plug-in hybrids, clean diesels, electrics, and so on, but also those that want more power. Cadillac is struggling with a much better line-up already than Lincoln even has planned. That LOONG-looking MKT thing coming in a year, plus some refreshed models, e.g. MKZ, isn't going to cut it.
I almost lost a couple of fingers to a Town Car trunk once when I was given one as a loaner. I closed the trunk and it sorta popped open a little. I assumed that I needed to push it back down harder, so I put my fingers under the lip to pull the trunk back up in order to have a bit more play when I pushed it back down. But WAIT - the thing has a mechanism that pulls the trunk closed automagically unbeknownst to me!!?? I realized this when the trunk began crushing my fingers, despite my trying hard to pull the trunk up and trying to pull my fingers out. The guy from the rental car compay stood there dumbfounded and finally the LM Service advisor ran to the car and pushed the trunk open button. Point? Even a POS garage door opener wont crush you if it hits you coming down, it will auto-reverse. Ford probably left off the auto-reverse sensor to save $5.00 a car and figured lawsuits from a few crushed fingers would be cheaper in the long run.
And for you, Allen, an intelligent guy, to say we overestimate Lincoln or Ford buyers because 90% wont open the hood? I mean, COME ON. Hey - I'll bet 90% wont change a tire either, but the lug nuts bother you and we both know how Ford SCREWED the pooch with the chrome lug nuts on the LS, which cant be removed with the lug nut wrench in the trunk. Or by a AAA truck in many cases. Further, I'll bet it's only 10% who dont open the hood. Most people want to see what's under there. Or, heaven forbid, add some oil or windshield washer fluid. I'm just surprised at this comment, Allen, and wonder if perhaps you watched the TV last night and the perhaps the inanity on display in Denver infiltrated your brain?
I swear Ford and maybe other car companies spend more money on PINHEADS whose only job is to try to save money by decontenting cars than the idiots will ever save from the changes. JUST BUILD THE DAMN CAR RIGHT. STOP TRYING TO SAVE 2 cents. FIRE the PINHEADS.
Thanks!
Now, let's remember that Congress did bail out Chrysler and Chrysler at the time more than made good on the deal, even if they had to do it with 62 iterations of the K car. I'm not recommending it now, but you will note Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were too important to let go down the toilet .bowl. That may no longer be true with Ford. Maybe help for Lincoln is in order. The MKS can't save it alone, because the numbers just won't work. I think the MKT coming is a big long fat thing that will splat down just as next summer driving season brings $5 gas. Where's the hybrid MKZ? What are the plans to extract more mpg out of the MKS? The MKZ, dumb as it was for Lincoln, could easily jump in nowas Lincoln's answer to Caddy's 4 cylinder, because it sure ain't a CTS competitor.
There are a lot of reliable used cars you can get for $22K and they won't depreciate as quickly. Everything is trade-offs of course, and the GM will make sense for some buyers. The only people I tend to see in new, civilian ones are old. I'm sure a shiney new one reminds them of the Detroit boats they drove in the 60s, 70s and 80s. They demand nothing of the car beyond that it is big, roomy, has power equipment, and goes from A to B with a floaty ride. They don't even notice that there are comfortable cars to be bought that don't clunk and shudder over road irregularities. Let's not even get started on the interior trim...
Anyway, I think the MKS was designed to pick up the slack here. Just as people went to downsized big cars in the 1970s (those "downsized" things seem humongous now), the last of the holdouts will move to Lucerne and Taurus and MKS type cars.
http://image.motortrend.com/f/auto_shows/coverage/los_angeles/9498847/112_2007lo- s_angeles_05z+2009_lincoln_mks+engine.jpg
It does not appear to have a prop rod. There is not one in the field of the image, and it does not look like there is a place at the front of the bay for a prop to go when down. And, in the top center of the picture, you can see what looks like the bottom of a hood strut.
Thats why I bought it because I thought it looked better than the Fusion. Unfortunately Mercury took away the cup holder cover right after the '06 model year. I have no idea why they took it away I like the cover but my '08 doesn;t have it. My salesguy told me the MKZ didn't have the cover bcuase they gave it the sliding console lid instead.
I am happy to report the MKS DOES have the covers and they look very nice
What I'm saying is that IN MY MIND (not yours) a prop rod doesn't equate to cheap therefore it doesn't matter to me whether a car has a prop rod, springs or struts.
The difference between that and cheap chrome clad lug nuts is that the prop rod works and the lug nuts don't - they fail and then you can't get the wheel off.
There are a lot of things Ford has cheaped out on that make a difference - not having electrically adjustable seat backs and tilt steering, brick stereos, etc.
I don't see anything in the MKS that indicates Lincoln is "cheaping out". And since the MKS doesn't have a prop rod there's no need to continue the discussion.
As it is, Ford has a few good products and some excellent plans--mostly for the Ford brand. But I cannot see Lincoln surviving long-term with their current and proposed line-up. I realize that the Ford brand will pay the bills, if anything ever does that there again. The MKS is simply a better or more up to date Lucerne (not a bad thing).
What Lincoln needs to field one of these days/years is a car with the presence Lincoln Continentals once had. There isn't much out there today that has the wow, gotta have it factor, unless you go well north of $100K. The Lexus formula isn't bad (great cars with me-too to almost forgettable styling), but as Cadillac has proven with the CTS, there is room out there for good cars that goes in their own stylistic direction.