Ford Motor, alone among America’s Big Three automakers, staved off bankruptcy and survived the financial crisis. Its sales, profit and stock price have surged. Now it faces what may be an even tougher challenge: Can it save its faltering Lincoln brand?
Lincoln sales peaked in 1990 at over 200,000 vehicles. By last year, sales of Lincoln, Ford’s luxury nameplate, had fallen to 85,643. Lincoln has lost ground to the perennial leaders Mercedes, BMW and Lexus, as well as to a resurgent Audi and a Detroit rival, Cadillac. It’s even losing customers to Ford’s own brands, as the revamped Taurus and critically praised new Ford Fusion offer an array of traditional luxury features.
To reinvent Lincoln, Ford has focused on design to an unusual, perhaps unprecedented, degree. It lured a 40-year-old designer, Max Wolff, from Cadillac and has accorded him the star treatment more commonly associated with fashion designers on the Paris and Milan runways.
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