LAIAS: 2009 Lincoln MKS

[Camino LS6]

The MKS is a stopgap product...a way to fill the Chicago plant's volume & a way to put a car out that ducks, in essence, much of the competition. It's a large car, FWD/AWD, when most of the competition in this space are going RWD with smaller vehicles.

Will it have the enthusiasts salivating-No. But it might just capture a piece of the market that Lincoln was giving away, regardless. To me, Acura, Infiniti & Buick have all had sedans in this space, selling decent volumes. Infiniti replaced the I35 with nothing, Acura moved the RL too far upmarket and Buick has the Lucerne covering ground that was once held by 2 sedans, so it may not be a bad strategic move.

We've got a F-L/M showroom, so I'm sure we'll get a good idea about this one rather quickly.

Agreed.

This car won't change the game, but it helps to keep Lincoln in it.

[AxelTheRed]

The MKS isn't bad...its just not something I'd really consider purchasing. The MKR...forget about it...if that got released, I'd only be buying essential things like gas and food and selling my possessions on eBay like crazy just to save up enough for one.

Ford's got great ideas, its just a shame they wuss out on them.

[ZL-1]

Cadillac deserves almost as much criticism as Lincoln these days. Clearly Lincoln is down because of lack of investment, on the other hand GM made a huge investment in Cadillac just to end up with no 3-series competitor, no 7-series competitor and two cars competing with 5-series of which one is not good enough to do the job and the other one nobody even knows it's competing with 5-series.

In the end, it's about focus and consistency, not just money. Cadillac has lacked both focus and consistency in the followup to the 1st CTS, so let's hope they execute it right this time around. Edited November 19, 2007 by ZL-1

[maxximus1]

oh man, it's deja vu on those gauge clusters yet again.

seems the name "lincoln" did just become an upper trim level for ford these days as one magazine had mentioned.

the exterior does look nice though.

[carman21]

Ford has Jaguar to contend with Mercedes, BMW, Cadillac, and Lexus.

Lincoln I believe will target Acura and later Buick.

The Lincoln Continental competed directly with the Buick Electra and Olds 88 in the 1960s. Cadillac was in a league of their own.

Ford had a separate Continental brand to compete with Cadillac, the only model was the famous Mark II.

Chrysler had a separate brand to compete with Caddy as well. Imperial had several models over the years.

Lincoln-Mercury has more in common with Buick-Pontiac than with Cadillac. Its just been a while and Caddy downgraded itself during the late 1970s to compete with Lincoln as GM moved Olds & Buick down-scale.

[ponchoman49]

If this is Lincolns new flagship and the styling direction, or lack of, then they are in real trouble. From the side profile this car is any bland genric Lexus/Toyota clone and the grille design is what I would expect on a future Oldsmobile. If you showed anybody the side profile of this bland car with no nameplate moniker, few would think it was a Lincoln. A Hyundai or Toyota or Lexus maybe. Designers today are clueless into thinking everybody out there wants bland slab sided plain looking generic cars that copy Toyota or the insert here current fad division of the day. What happened to good old American design?