MCG contributor Jim McCraw has been covering the automotive beat for over 40 years now, and he has a question: What’s up with Lincoln?  Maybe the brand’s storied past can provide some much-needed direction today.

 

Henry Leland, Lincoln, And The Future

by Jim McCraw

Let’s talk about the legacy of Henry Leland.  He was a mechanical genius from Vermont who first worked in the firearms industry and was one of the pioneers in interchangeable parts and volume manufacturing.  He designed and built engines, precision tools, machining processes.  He consulted with Henry Ford in the early days.

In 1902, with solid financial backing, he was a principal in a new car company, Cadillac, named after the founder of the city of Detroit, Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac.  He sold that car company to General Motors in 1909.

A few years later, Leland started Lincoln Motor Company, building Liberty V12 aircraft engines for the government in World War I.  After the war, he started building V8 engines and Lincoln luxury cars to put them in.

When the company foundered in 1922, Henry Ford came along, bought Lincoln out of  bankruptcy and put Leland and his son, Wilfred, to work.  But not for long.  The Lelands were soon shown the door, and Henry Ford was left to run his luxury car brand on his own.

That was 90 years ago.  Since Leland left Ford, there have been dozens of beautiful, timeless designs built on Lincoln V8 and V12 Model K, KA, and KB chassis by some of the most honored and historic coachbuilders in the business: Briggs, Dietrich, LeBaron, Murphy, Brunn, et al.

Then Edsel Ford and E.T. Gregorie moved the design needle for Lincoln with the streamlined Lincoln Zephyr series, starting in 1936, and leading to the introduction of the iconic Lincoln Continental.

The first Continental was a one-off designed by Gregorie for Edsel Ford’s personal use, with a flathead V-12, a long hood, a short deck, and a covered, rear-mounted spare tire.  The Continental went into series production in 1939, was redone for the war-shortened 1942 model year, and redone yet again for the 1946-48 postwar versions.

Those same Continental proportions were honored with the introduction of the Lincoln Continental Mark II, the four-seater coupe manufactured by the new Continental division in 1956-57 and offered at the lofty price of $10,000.  That car has become a classic.

The next great Lincoln design landmark was the 1961 model, the knife-edged, slab-sided four-door with the front-opening rear doors and the fine-mesh grille, still highly sought after by collectors.

Another great beauty in its time was the Lincoln Continental Mark III, introduced in the spring of 1968 and following most of the design cues of the Mark II: long hood, short deck, and vestigial spare-tire trunk lid.

There wasn’t another great Lincoln built until the Continental Mark VII was introduced in 1984, adding air suspension to the product mix.  It’s my belief this was the last cool Lincoln ever built, a car with distinction, a car that Henry Leland would be proud of.

Lincoln’s recent pronouncements about its new, dedicated design studio and its stated intent to take the brand to Europe notwithstanding, we think Henry Leland would look at today’s product lineup, look at the domestic and import luxury competition and shout, “What are you people doing?”

Against the brand’s direct competition, Lincoln has no really good-looking cars and a couple of overcooked SUVs.  There’s no coupe.  There are no V8-powered cars.  There are no diesels.  The powerhouse Lincoln engine is a 365-horsepower twin-turbo V6.  To the company’s credit, there are a couple of hybrids.

Chief competitor Cadillac, Henry Leland’s first creation, has a 556-horsepower supercharged V8 engine available in a terrific-looking CTS-V coupe, sedan or wagon, a new ATS and XTS, and a pair of all-wheel-drive sedans available. Audi, BMW, Lexus and Mercedes-Benz have a collective armada of products that Lincoln can’t even touch.

So we ask, Lincoln: In spite of your having hired away Cadillac designer Max Wolff, where is your great-looking Mark X coupe?  Where is the new Lincoln Continental sedan?  We have seen the new MKS, and, aft of the grille, it looks like little more than a 110-percent scale version of the Volvo S80.

Ford has V8 engines of 414, 444, 550 and 660 horsepower that could be used in a gorgeous all-wheel-drive Lincoln Mark X coupe, but there is no such coupe on the horizon, nor a truly complete sedan that can sell against the competition.

What now, Lincoln?

 

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