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Founded in 1917 by Henry M. Leland, Lincoln is a luxury car brand operated under
the Ford Motor Company, and it has been making vehicles for the upscale market
since the 1920's. Leland, who was also one of the founders of Cadillac, formed
the Lincoln Motor Company during World War I, in order to build Liberty aircraft
engines. It was not until after the war that the factories were redesigned for
car manufacturing.
During the transition from planes to autos, the company had severe financial
issues, and in 1922 it was purchased by the Ford Motor Company, in a sort of
financial act of revenge by Ford, who had been forced out of his second company
by a group of investors led by Leland. (Ironically, Ford's originally company,
Cadillac, would eventually be purchased by GM, and become Lincoln's chief
rival.) Alongside Cadillac and Duesenberg, Lincoln became one of America's
top-selling luxury brands.
In 1932, Lincoln introduced the V12-powered KB in response to Ford's V8 Model
18, but sales were disappointing. That same year, however, Eugene T. "Bob"
Gregorie began designing the car that would eventually become the Continental.
It started as a one-off project for Edsel Ford, who wanted a European-style car
for Florida vacations - something smaller and spiffier than the boxy designs his
father's company was known for.
Introduced for the 1936 model year, the sporty Zephyr, which featured a 1.8
liter V12, was so successful it almost became a brand name, and it was also
Gregorie's inspiration, because what he did was to section a 1938 Zephyr Coupe
about four inches, allowing most of the existing dies and tooling to be
retained, and adding the distinctive vertically-mounted spare tire. This became
the Continental, and by the time it ended production in 1948, more than 5300 of
them had been built, almost entirely by hand. The original Zephyr stopped
production in 1942, and was never revived.
In 1955, the Continental Mark II revived the concept. It was produced for one
year by the Continental division, before it was returned to the Lincoln marque,
and it had a list price of $10,000 - the same as that year's Rolls-Royce. In
1958, the Edsel division merged with Lincoln-Mercury, becoming the Mercury-Edsel-Lincoln
division until the Edsel was discontinued in 1960. Meanwhile, the Continental
became Lincoln's flagship model until 1981, when the Town Car, formerly the
Lincoln's top trim level, became its own model, and usurped the role.
Until 1998, Lincoln remained a top-selling luxury brand in the United States,
helped along by the amazingly successful Navigator SUV, and re-designed
Continentals and Town Cars. From 1998 to 2002, it was part of Ford's Premier
Automotive Group, but it was pulled out when Ford decided to separate its import
and domestic marques. Since then, the company has lagged behind Japanese,
European, and American competitors, in part because of a lack of new models.
The company promised five new models in the four years 2004-2008, and has
already begun with the new 2006 Mark LT pickup, Zephyr (upgraded and renamed
Lincoln MKZ for the 2007 model year) and the MKX Crossover SUV. |
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