Lincoln first dipped a toe into luxury pickup waters in 1998 with the Blackwood concept, closely based on the wildly successful Ford F-150.
In past decades the idea of a Lincoln pickup truck would have seemed ridiculous, but by the late ’90s it was making perfect sense. Ford’s F-150 pickups were flying off the dealer lots, many of them kitted out with every luxury option and hefty sticker prices. The Navigator, Lincoln’s full-sized SUV based on the F-150 and Ford Expedition SUV, was selling in record numbers, too. It seemed only natural, then, that a full-sized luxury pickup would be a perfect addition to the Lincoln product line.
To test the obvious theory, Lincoln introduced the Blackwood concept in late 1998 at the Los Angeles Auto Show. As anyone could see, the Blackwood was closely based on the Ford F-150, with the addition of a Navigator front end and a Navigator-based instrument panel and interior. What set it apart from the other Ford Motor Company products was its distinctive cargo bed treatmement,
The Blackwood name was inspired by the 20 square feet of African Wenge hardwood that covered the flanks of the pickup bed, contrasting with strips of aluminum to create a pinstripe-suit effect. (Wenge is now endangered.) The cargo box was more like a passenger car’s external trunk than a traditional pickup bed, with dual, horizontally opening doors instead of a tailgate and a hinged decklid, powered electrically and remotely operated via the key fob, to seal the contents from the weather. The floor and sides of the stubby (4 ft 8 in) cargo box were lined with polished aluminum.
Displayed at the Los Angeles, Detroit, and Frankfurt, Germany auto shows, the Blackwood was warmly recieved by showgoers and won a ton of exposure in the automotive media. So much so, in fact, that Ford almost immediately announced that the Blackwood was approved for production.
However, when the production Blackwood arrived in 2002, it received exactly the opposite reception. Lincoln could barely give the fancy pickups away, it turned out, and the Blackwood was cancelled in the USA after just one year. Sales continued in Mexico in 2003, but in total fewer than 3,283 vehicles were produced, far below the 18,000 projected. And while the media enjoyed the novelty of the original concept, they decided the production version was downright silly. Car and Driver, Autoblog, and Jalopnik were merciless in their ridicule.
Clearly, there was a market for fully-equipped luxury pickups, but it appears that buyers weren’t inclined to pay a premium for the Lincoln name and sissy-fied convenience features. If anything, the ultra-luxe branding seemed to leverage against the pickup truck’s masculine image. Cadillac attempted a similar strategy with its 2002-13 Escalade EXT pickups and fared little better. Lincoln tried the luxury pickup market a second time with the Mark LT of 2005-08, and while it sold considerably better than the Blackwood, it failed to meet its targets and was discontinued in the USA—though it continued on in Mexico through 2014.
I really like these and the LT’s–the only pickups, besides Rancheros, I’d own.
Yep, if you’re going to buy a huuuge jacked-up pickup, it’s better scream “working class roots” and look like you’re using it for something more than hauling three bags of mulch from Home Depot.
I’ve heard that the Mark LT only sold to the owners of companies that had fleets of F-150’s.
(Having said that, I’ll admit I’m considering an F-150 Lightning as a replacement for my current Chevy Bolt. Happy wife, happy life, and I’m married to a genuine Virginia redneck. And an EV is the only way I’ll consider owning a full sized pickup.)
Blackwood lacked a 4×4 road presence… a no deal for many shoppers.
3,283 Blackwoods made? That’s like an order of magnitude more than the number I’ve always heard.
One of our local Ford-Lincoln dealers had a Blackwood in his showroom for nearly 18 months. He absolutely refused to budge on the $56k sticker for over a year, after which he finally started making tiny price reductions. The truck was eventually moved out to the lot, and the price had been slowly whittled down to $34k. Knowing that it had been sitting for a long time, I made an offer to a salesman of $30k for the truck; the salesman shot me a dirty look and walked back into the showroom without saying a word. A few weeks later, I learned that the truck had finally been sold … for $29k.
The Blackwood was not one of Ford’s better ideas, that’s for sure.
The Blackwood had two problems as soon as it hit the showrooms, you couldn’t use it like a truck without destroying the bed, and it was way overpriced. The bed cover was nice, but since it was mounted, it limited what would fit in the bed height wise. The shiny aluminum panels were pretty, but a load of sand or other abrasive material would have destroyed the finish. Some of them even had carpet in the bed area, I knew a guy who had one that way.
The pricing? Why pay that much for a truck you’d be scared to haul anything in? Not many people did, except maybe those folks that only hauled around a bag of golf clubs…