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Comments
-I won't buy it because it doesn't have enough domestic content in it for me. :sick:
Rocky
Rocky
I actually dislike the CTS for many of the same reasons that I don't care for the Zephyr - but the CTS at least is RWD on the Sigma platform. It's a good car, well designed and built well.
I also get amazed by what Acura does. Acura is the best branded car money can buy currently. They are affordable and luxurious, and offer high levels of technology. My dream car besides the Buick Velite is a SH-AWD 6 speed Acura TL with about 350 horsepower. I'd take a RL with this level too.
GM's line-up needs a G8 with gadgetology like that found in the TL to be a real winner. The next CTS better have gadgetology if GM wants me to buy one.
Rocky
To me luxury is good, durable build quality. Luxury is a comfortable, controlled ride which gives me a balance of road feel without harshness. Luxury is enough low end grunt to get me into traffic with minimal adrenaline. Luxury is tactile steering feel. Luxury is a good sound system I don’t need a separate owner’s manual for. Luxury is functional simplicity; sufficient head room; and a spacious, useable trunk. I don’t need a nav system (although the real-time updates of the Acura RL’s system is a compelling technology). I don’t need clashing textures and materials (Acura TL) or Las Vegas electroluminescent gauges. I don’t need the car to turn the windshield wipers on for me.
I’m not saying the Zephyr does it for me, but in many respects I like its styling better than that of the Acura or Lexus.
Rocky
Rocky
You're dead on with the Cadillac also. The crappy interior, bathtub seating and lack of sophisticated gagetry are all turn offs - but I'd take one over a Zephyr. Frankly, I wouldn't take either. I'd want a V-8 Northstar STS. What's the deal anyway, with offering a V-6 STS anyway? This is a Cadillac, for hell's sake! :confuse:
You're not serious, are you?
I nvbanker, would like to see the TL get a turbo slapped onto the 3.2. I also would like them if possible turn the redline up to about 8,000.
We agree once again on alot of topics and only disagree on a few.
Rocky
Are you talking quality or styling? Zephyr has gotten high marks for quality of execution, if not for style.
As a matter of taste, I kind of like the Lincoln theme, but I think overall I like the Cadillac (and yes, the Buick) styling better. They're modern without being showy.
Boy, I don't get that at all.. Cadillac isn't showy? Buick isn't, but Caddy? It's so different!
As for the future of Lincoln, it would not surprise me one bit when Ford Motor holds in annual shareholders meeting here in Washington D.C. May 11, that Wixom will be sold lock stock and barrel to Chinese manufacturers with which Ford has a partnership. Much Like Stalin asking FDR for Packard dies and tooling for the 160/180 in 1942 as part of Lend-Lease, leaving Packard without topline cars to sell after the war in 1945, Lincoln---upon closing Wixom---won't have a viable replacement, and they'll be making Town Cars in Bejing! Ford Motor just posted another $1Bn plus loss for North America this quarter, Mr. Fields and Ms. Steven have their work cut out for them...maybe that will offset some of their losses, it's just the kind of idea they would think of, and Bill would accept!
Without a full-scale proper & unique Lincoln, or a revived Continental, Lincoln has no future in the upscale luxury market, and only Cadillac (or a revived Imperial) will be all that is left of our once shining industry at the top range. We once made the best cars in the world, and now those honors aren't accorded to very many cars made or designed here. Ford will have effectively copied what George Christopher and James Nance accomplished at Packard, bringing Lincoln fully downscale...though Nance's last hurrah in 1955-56 was too much too late. Making Lincoln a competitor for Buick...
DouglasR
As for Packard, remember the Patrician with Ultra Matic drive? That didn't come out of Stalintown.
Do you mean Ford already has a Chinese partnership, or is that part of the speculation?
Interesting speculation it is, too. The Chinese are flush with cash, after all, much as the Japanese were. I wonder how long it will be before we have Chinese car plants in the US, as we do Japanese. Well, I guess after they buy WIxom.
As always, another enjoyable post, DouglasR.
The MKX isn't in the same league, although it should sell well, being less expensive and more economical. BTW, Lincoln is making a mistake if they add $2,000 to the MKZ price, even with the 3.5 and AWD. They are already discounting the present one heavily. Getting their MSRPs closer to transaction prices would help a lot. That could even help out the old Town Car.
The absence of information leads to a new XJ8L, not a Benz, nor a Lexie.
Rocky
Within two years from now, Lincolns could be rolling off the lines in China. It would be a sad day to see the big Lincoln leave America, but the move would save the concept....something Bill Ford seems not to want to sell in America. Whether Ford sold Chinese manufactured Lincolns under the Lincoln name is another matter. Shipping the car back to America might lower its production cost by 25%, especially considering the average wage in Shanghai is $18,500 per annum, as opposed to the $38,500 in Wixom. Why Ford was able to price Zephyr/Z $10,000 less than LS---making the car in Hermisilio rather than Atlanta.
The same may well happen with Lincoln in China. Changan-Ford CEO Phil Spender and his counterpart Zou Wenchao will be kept busy if Lincoln repeats in China what Packard did in Russia. The only difference being that Ford would retain ownership of the product, whereas Packard did not. In such fashion the "last Lincoln" would be kept in production for some time. Taxi services on the mainland and Hong Kong would love the Town-Car L. They would, of course, have to change the name of the model.... (The 'Setting Sun'? )
Since Lincoln and Messrs. Ford, Fields, Mays, Horbury, Thomas, and Ms. Stevens have neglected to announce what future Lincoln does have beyond clones of existing platforms...with no new product seemingly in the pipeline...the Chinese option for Lincoln seems more than just a parting sorrow.
DouglasR
PS: The "Last Packard" was not actually built in 1958 by Studebaker-Packard at South Bend, it was built in Russia as a Zil Convertible-cabroilet two door and given as a gift to retiring WWII Red Army General, Klement E. Voroshilov in August 1961. Perhaps in 2017 we can still buy rwd Town Cars in China, using the 'grey-market', export them back to America!
Maybe, but you'll have to wait until 2042 to import it thanks to the 25-year DOT exemption.
Packard got to the Soviet Union because Stalin loved the car, many pre-war photos of him in a car were in American made Packards.
2011 Hyundai Sonata, 2014 BMW 428i convertible, 2015 Honda CTX700D
I can't see myself ever buying a Chinese Lincoln, and I have a hard time reconciling myself to the thought of buying a Mexican Lincoln. One of the reasons I bought my LS was because it satisfied my desire to buy a car built in America by an American-owned company. That's getting harder to do! :mad:
As I've said before - would you rather buy an Acura made in Japan or a Lincoln made in Mexico?
Aside - I wonder if any Lincolns will be made in Mexico today, the day of "Nothing Gringo"? I wonder if Ford Mexico will close down in support of the "undocumented workers" demanding that AMerica change it's laws to suit them? I wonder too if any Mexican Ford workers will show their love for the "Gringo" in the craftsmanship of today's Ford products built there?
Given that choice and based on my "buy American" leanings, I'd have to go with the Lincoln made in Mexico rather than the Acura made in Japan, obviously. The fact that the TSX (or was it the TL?) is made in Japan was a strike against it.
Now, if you had asked about a Mexican Lincoln or an American Acura, that would be a more difficult philosophical quandry. With the Lincoln, at least profits would come back to the US. With the Acura, profits may go back to Japan, but wages and the trickle down effect would stay in in Ohio, or wherever.
The Japanese build scads of cars here that benefit more tha just the auto workers. Teasing out what purchase will actually benefit the US economy most is not readily evident, given all the givens. Heck, many American cars have become world class only because American consumers started demanding better quality (through buying Japanese).
A Lincoln made in Mexico strikes me as no more American than an Acura made in Japan. Mexico is not remotely the USA to me (except that we did take Texas, New Mexico and Arizona from them).
Of course Lincoln at this juncture is still an American nameplate...but the Zephyr (and soon to be released MKX) wouldn't exist without Mazda. So I admit I don't know anything--except that it gets complex when the intent is to only "buy American."
Is the Ford Crown Victoria and Mercury Grand Marquis more American to you when they are made in Canada?
Very true. That's why the LS was an easy call - built in America by an American company.
And, while I'm not the brightest bulb in the chandelier, I'm not so dim that I don't suspect my LS has foreign content.
I know you directed that to gregg_vw, but to me the answer's "nope."
Why a "Kowloon-Kontinental", or a remanufactured Lincoln and rebuilt Wixom in China makes (frightening) sense... BLS Cadillac is already a warmed-over Saab built in Skenk, Belgium, complete with Diesel engine options, but not available in America. At least GM is trying to fight the game even on competitors' turf. Lincoln seems to be doing very little in that regard, and without a subsequent announcement by Ford Motor, seems to have no factory, no future, and no exciting designs that indicate Lincoln will remain a premium marque on paar with Cadillac, BMW, Mercedes, et. al.
The fact that Buick sells more cars in China than it does in America is a harbinger of what is to come. For Q1 Britain exported 74.3% of its production, Jaguar, Rolls-Royce, & Bentley all selling more cars outside its home market, as has BMW. Where cars are sold and built seems not to be as important as who designs them and which label they are amongs many manufacturers. Yet...Lincoln (& Cadillac) can't survive without a strong home market performance, and prescence on its own turf. It can have foreign subsidiaries, and still capture market share as Rolls-Royce Springfield USA did between 1919-1931...and it can export the bulk of its production (as R-R does at 89%), but I wager no premium brand can survive long without it. Neither Rolls-Royce, Bentley, or Jaguar could survive being wholly manufactured in Germany, or outside of Great Britain. And neither can Lincoln, if it is made exclusively outside America---which Mr. Ford seems to think is acceptable.
It's a sad day for me, as Messrs. Wagoner, Ford, and Zetsche meet the President at the White House on May 18, that they do not also say they are going to build new modern factories, highlighting the best that they can build, (Like the Rolls-Royce plant at Goodwood, and 'Die Glaserne Fabrik for Bentley & VW at Dresden) both for domestic and export sales...and keep jobs here in America. Ford Motor and Mr. William C. Ford Jr. could do that with Lincoln...using an 'innovative' Continental as the touch-stone of a new era. They will, instead, no doubt, fight over CAFE standards (which the President will want to raise to 40.0 mpg), and relaxing trade barriers between America and China---all very important issues, yet for Lincoln, Mr. Ford is seemingly passing up agreat opportunity without such an annoucement.
The only hope now for the large rwd V8/V10/V12 platform at Lincoln is the Kowloon Kontinental. If anything, it would offset our balance of trade with China...since the way things are pointed, Lincoln automobiles won't be made in America in any case, they will be made in Canada, Mexico and China. While Mr. Leland would be spinning in his grave...given what has happened to Lincoln and Cadillac (which he founded) and the global market, the question has indeed become: Who's design is it?, and Who holds the high cards in the marketplace...?
Hopefully Lincoln might still have a seat at the table...
Yet, if Ford Motor & Mr. Ford did make such an annoucement, in either regard, Lincoln at least could lead the charge in the global marketplace for Ford---fighting the competition not only on our turf, but theirs as well....
DouglasR
Today...we are indeed "on the home front" as we fight across the globe against those who would take away our right just to go to work in peace. It is a sad day too that Lincoln has chosen to dump the Zephyr name. But then...Lincoln has no real future as it is not outlined at Ford Motor. Relegated as it now is as an adjunct of other Ford Motor platforms, and manufactured overseas. I don't count the trucks...Lincolns should never have been trucks (Yes I know... Cadillac Escalade was their answer to Navigator and it was a huge profitable success...but it is because of that which brings Lincoln to the trouble it now has, having forsaken car production to truck production!).
But the larger issue remains: Will we make great cars in America again? Or are we doomed to a marginal manufacturing and design fate, with our products designed here and made in China, Mexico, Canada, etc? Yes, its OK if we make the design, but I can't help but feel that without home manufacturing plants to show what the home team can do...that in the long run the industrial performance of our nation is, well, at stake. We can't outsource all of our jobs, only to buy the finished products on the shelf, having been made elsewhere. Who will take on engineering and design jobs if this happens? Our colleges can't turn out students, only to have them leave for India, & China, etc. Yes, its great to have that experience when you are young as I have, but when the going gets tough, we have to come home to America...and we still have to make things here in the good o'l U.S.A. Mr. Ford seems to have forgotten that fact...despite his saving and reinventing The Rouge.
I will state my point of view as stark as I can: the fate of Ford hinges on Lincoln, for without a viable product-line, its Lincoln-Mercury franchise can't last. Without that...and the revenues and profits they capture, Ford Motor can't survive against the onslaught of competition...suffering continued declines in market share, against the Korean, Chinese, and Japanese manufacturers. The expansion of Ford Motor was necessary in 1921, true in 1936, and is true 70 years after Zephyr's introduction.
...It is no longer the matter that: "What's Good for General Motors is good for America..." as Charles L. Wilson once said when Mr. Cooke toured America in his retreaded Zephyr, today its certainly true: "As Lincoln turns, so goes the nation...how far the wheels turn at Lincoln means how well they turn for America..." Our Nation! Mr. Ford, God is watching.
DouglasR
We've had much this same discussion where I work. We're losing our manufacturing capabilities, our self-sufficiency. However, I'm pessimistic enough to believe that as a country we won't wake up until it's too late. Give us inexpensive, and some argue cheap, consumer goods, and we'll be happy.
The masses are kept placated with bread and circuses, and with Wal-mart and Chinese Lincolns.
WE, of course, are those masses. Everytime I see a Town Car now on the road, and here in Washington D.C. they are the favorite of many Embassy's and Livery Services. You see a privately tagged Town Car every so often. I cringe to think that the clock is now ticking down on the Big Lincoln and Wixom.
Mr. Ford, and Ford Motor are scheduled to have their shareholders meeting here in Washington this week, and next week meets the President to discusss environmental, fuel economy, and other issues, especially health-care costs for workers. GM spends more on health-care than they do for steel...Starbucks spends more on health-care than they do for coffee...so it is not just a problem of the auto industry. At an average cost of $1,500 per vehicle sold, that is what Ford Motor must shell out for its work-force, both on the job, in the jobs-bank, and also retired---the ratio being two workers waiting or retired for every worker on the line.... And nevermind the now $3.30 gallon price for fuel affecting future planning trends. We have to pay it no matter.... This is what Bill Ford faces everyday when he drives to work at the Glass House in his Ford F150.
The winds of change for Lincoln and for Zephyr point the way that, perhaps, all cars might go: being adjunct parts of a larger platform shared by different brands, all assembled in Just-in-Time multifaceted factories---able to produce two or three different vehicles at one time. All true. Yet Chrysler continues to sell 300's and their siblings at a consistent rate, sales have improved in the last three months, and the average transaction price is $30,500 for every 300 sold! You can run a car company a long time on that kind of return. But Ford has no answer to 300. And "Imperial" means to take away those customers one step above Zephyr---both from Cadillac and Lincoln.
What's missing from the Ford Motor picture is any consistent plan for Lincoln---either for factories, products, or direction. Four show cars over as many years, and no new product other than the teaser S...which ostensibly will be built in Chicago. Mr. Lutz teased and taunted us on 60 Minutes with the new Cadillacs: Where is Bill Ford with Lincoln? or J Mays, Peter Horbury? or even the reboubtable Mr. Fields?? So I have suggested that Wixom be picked up lock, stock, barrel, and wingnut and shipped to China to keep the "Grand Dame" alive. People pay $1Mn for a Rolls-Royce Phantom in China, inclusive of tariffs, taxes, and registration costs...so they'd be willing to buy Lincolns too. Perhaps Mr Ford is reticent to invest in Lincoln or Continental given the denouement of his father's Continental Mark II.... Mr. Ford should go drive a Mark III around town and listen to the comments he would get. Though I don't suggest Ford builds another 10mpg luxury car again.
Since Lincoln and Mercury gave Ford Motor the breadth and later depth to withstand the competition throughout the post-war era, Mr. Ford owes it to the stockholders to tell them where Lincoln is going---and what happens to Ford Motor without capital investment in the brand. Without a successor to the Town Car, of able performance and ample dimensions, as well as the 'prescence' of the upscale Lincoln or Continental product, I am afraid that the only winds he will feel, won't be the warming "Zephyr" of success, but the cold bitter breezes of failure. What will he say to his "family" two years from now when Wixom is gone, and his former loyal owners have bought Chryslers and Cadillacs?
Zephyr and S could be a great begining, but it remains only part and not enough of the story. Without some indication or sign from Ford Motor today where they want to take Lincoln beyond those low-end cars, they should not simply allow Lincoln to become like the tires on MR. Cooke's Zephyr in 1942: Retreads!
DouglasR
If that happens, we will have ZERO Ford auto products using an American-engineered chassis.
I guess Nasser DID get rid of all the engineers.
Oh, and if Ford wants to lower it's labor costs, it could copy the high tech industry here in California - just claim they can't find qualified workers and have congress authorize importation of workers from third world countries who will do the same job for 1/2 the price. Simple. Or, just move the plants to the third world.
A recent issue of Radiology Today magazine touted the new technology which will allow doctors to remotely analyze X-Rays and other patient diagnostics. The mag showed an MD at a beautiful home high in the Rockies doing this remote work. What a joke. The reality will be an MD in a seedy shop in New Delhi working for 1/10 of what an MD makes in America.
Stick a fork in US, we're done.
"Democracy is all done...Democracy is finished in England, It may be here..." ---Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy, November 8, 1941, Boston Globe interview by Louis Lyons.
"We have nothing to fear but fear itself..." FDR spoke in March 1933 to a challenged nation. Nearly a decade later he would also say: "We are calling for new plants and additions, additions to old plants. We are calling for plant conversion...we are seeking more men and women to run them...we are working longer hours.... We are coming to realise that one extra plane, extra tank, or extra gun or extra ship completed tomorrow, may in a few months, turn the tide on some distant battlefield."---FDR, Fireside Chat, February 1942.
Mr. Ford...FDR's words then apply as well today, for we are indeed a nation at war on more than just the battlefield: "We are calling for more plant and additions..." 'Democracy', of course, is more than just the free right of humans to beleive in those ideas with which our country is founded. A concept no less finished now than it was when Ambassador Kennedy made his infamous extemporaneous remarks as London was being bombed. It means as well, to Build...to design, with the common bond of men and women to come together to create great things...whether they be cars, or what-have-you. At the time Ford Motor was third behind Chrysler, in 1941. The call and urgency as great then as it now is, only the landscape has changed. The challenge stands for more than just making cars.
If we here now beleive that "we are finished..." then we will indeed succumb to become a nation of vasals importing goods manufactured outside our borders. Yet, we forget that when our nation was the weakest (against the power of Britain and France, Germany and Russia!) made the finest cars and trucks in the world, garnering the majority share of global production. Today we still remain the strongest nation, but no longer claim the 'crown' of making the greatest cars, though we do make the best trucks, and no longer hold the majority share of the global automotive market. All the more reason why we should revive our automotive industry to make the finest cars in the world, regardless of the market or type they are sold in.
All the more reason why Mr. Ford, at his shareholders meeting should announce, forthwith, his plans for the future...for Lincoln which is the lynchpin of his company---though he may not yet know it. When FDR made his wartime speeches, reminding our citizens---whom are and were our grandfathers, uncles, and blood relatives---the Zephyr was as important then for Lincoln as it is now...having then become the 'Continental' in 1939 to succeed the soon-to-be discontinued K V12. Today the future of Lincoln is in the same position that it was when FDR made his broadcasts to the nation in time of war.
This time, Lincoln stands---not just for an automotive marque built from 1921 by the great patriot Henry M. Leland---but as talismen where manufacturing is headed in this nation. Do we want to be the best? Yes. I say YES. That a vast majority of citizens want to see the best from Lincoln, to have that chance. To buy an American car that puts/paid to the legions of forgettable foreign imports (no matter how good/cheap they may be) with which our eyeballs must suffer. There are many outstanding cars made overseas, some by Ford Motor, all of which we should remain free to buy here...but they should stand side by side by the best our nation has to offer. Mr. Ford, Lincoln, and Ford Motor should not be afraid to compete. Our nation has risen from the cask of failures before...conquered all odds and all challenges, and Mr. Ford should place as much confidence in Lincoln and the loyal owners as our citizens do for Ford and the prosects for our future. The capital expended equal to the spirit with which this nation is capable.
As Churchill asked of our nation in May 1940: "Give us the tools..." And that, Mr. Ford is what you must give to us...and the automobiles produced with the same fighting spirit, if you are not to become third again. "Give us the tools...and we shall finish the job." That is what our nation must do once again.
DouglasR
Yes, I spoke to Abraham Lincoln in New Delhi today - working for American Express. I was underwhelmed.
Mea culpa, forgot about the Mustang. So we'd have 1 USA-designed car chassis.