{"id":329660,"date":"2010-02-16T17:58:00","date_gmt":"2010-02-16T22:58:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.autoblog.com\/2010\/02\/16\/detnews-fords-slow-revival-of-lincoln-taking-heat-from-dealers\/"},"modified":"2010-02-16T17:58:00","modified_gmt":"2010-02-16T22:58:00","slug":"detnews-fords-slow-revival-of-lincoln-taking-heat-from-dealers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/329660","title":{"rendered":"DetNews: Ford&#8217;s slow revival of Lincoln taking heat from dealers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Filed under: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.autoblog.com\/category\/carbuying\/\" rel=\"tag\">Car Buying<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.autoblog.com\/category\/lincoln\/\" rel=\"tag\">Lincoln<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.autoblog.com\/category\/luxury\/\" rel=\"tag\">Luxury<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.autoblog.com\/gallery\/first-drive-2010-lincoln-mkt-ecoboost\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" hspace=\"0\" border=\"1\" vspace=\"4\" src=\"http:\/\/www.blogcdn.com\/www.autoblog.com\/media\/2010\/02\/630mkt.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<div style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><em><small>2010 Lincoln MKT &#8211; click above for high-res image gallery<\/small><\/em><\/strong><\/div>\n<p>\nIn a nutshell, the problem with <a href=\"http:\/\/autoblog.com\/make\/lincoln\">Lincoln<\/a> is that on the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.autoblog.com\/tag\/SHO\/\">Taurus SHO<\/a> launch, Ford brought along an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.autoblog.com\/tag\/a6\">Audi A6 4.2<\/a> for comparison&#8217;s sake. Says one Lincoln dealer, &#8220;It&#8217;s hard to sell a $48,000 MKS when the Ford guy down the street has a Taurus with the same features for $10,000 less.&#8221; Put another way, despite the polarizing new sheetmetal, it&#8217;s still obvious to consumers that the MKZ is a Fusion, the MKS is a Taurus, the MKX is an Edge and the MKT is the Flex.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I have more dedicated Lincoln-Mercury employees than Ford Motor Co. does. They don&#8217;t have any executives who wake up every day thinking about these brands.&#8221; Says Lincoln\/Mercury dealer owner Chris Lemley to <em>The Detroit News<\/em> in what might just be the &#8220;<em>ouch!<\/em>&#8221; comment of the year. <\/p>\n<p>Part of the problem is without question the not-so-great state of the economy, with luxury sales tanking by nearly 25 percent in 2009. Still, with Lincolns priced lower than the competition, one might think they&#8217;d be selling better. For instance, the Lincoln MKT (priced at $49,995 with all the fixins) matches up quite well with the much more expensive Audi Q7 ($61,825). However, &#8220;If people were cross-shopping Audi and Lincoln, that would be great,&#8221; said one analyst. &#8220;Audi buyers are shopping for a style statement. They&#8217;re not even looking at Lincoln. Lincoln still has not gotten back up to first-tier luxury.&#8221; Hence all that dealer fury.<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<div class=\"postgallery\">\n<p><strong>Gallery: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.autoblog.com\/photos\/first-drive-2010-lincoln-mkt-ecoboost\/low\/\">First Drive: 2010 Lincoln MKT EcoBoost<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.autoblog.com\/photos\/first-drive-2010-lincoln-mkt-ecoboost\/low\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.blogcdn.com\/www.autoblog.com\/media\/2009\/10\/lincolnmktecoboostfd_01_thumbnail.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"\" \/><\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/www.autoblog.com\/photos\/first-drive-2010-lincoln-mkt-ecoboost\/low\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.blogcdn.com\/www.autoblog.com\/media\/2009\/10\/lincolnmktecoboostfd_02_thumbnail.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"\" \/><\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/www.autoblog.com\/photos\/first-drive-2010-lincoln-mkt-ecoboost\/low\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.blogcdn.com\/www.autoblog.com\/media\/2009\/10\/lincolnmktecoboostfd_03_thumbnail.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"\" \/><\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/www.autoblog.com\/photos\/first-drive-2010-lincoln-mkt-ecoboost\/low\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.blogcdn.com\/www.autoblog.com\/media\/2009\/10\/lincolnmktecoboostfd_04_thumbnail.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"\" \/><\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/www.autoblog.com\/photos\/first-drive-2010-lincoln-mkt-ecoboost\/low\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.blogcdn.com\/www.autoblog.com\/media\/2009\/10\/lincolnmktecoboostfd_05_thumbnail.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n<p>\n[Source: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.detnews.com\/article\/20100216\/AUTO01\/2160369\/1148\/?source=nletter-business\">The Detroit News<\/a>]<\/p>\n<div style=\"border: medium none ; overflow: hidden; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;\" id=\"TixyyLink\"> <\/div>\n<p><\/p>\n<div style=\"border: medium none ; overflow: hidden; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;\" id=\"TixyyLink\"> <\/div>\n<p><\/p>\n<div style=\"border: medium none ; overflow: hidden; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;\" id=\"TixyyLink\"> <\/div>\n<p style=\"padding:5px;background:#ddd;border:1px solid #ccc;clear:both;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.autoblog.com\/2010\/02\/16\/detnews-fords-slow-revival-of-lincoln-taking-heat-from-dealers\/\">DetNews: Ford&#8217;s slow revival of Lincoln taking heat from dealers<\/a> originally appeared on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.autoblog.com\">Autoblog<\/a> on Tue, 16 Feb 2010 17:58:00 EST.  Please see our <a href=\"http:\/\/www.weblogsinc.com\/feed-terms\/\">terms for use of feeds<\/a>.<\/p>\n<h6 style=\"clear: both; padding: 8px 0 0 0; height: 2px; font-size: 1px; border: 0; margin: 0; padding: 0;\"><\/h6>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.autoblog.com\/2010\/02\/16\/detnews-fords-slow-revival-of-lincoln-taking-heat-from-dealers\/\" rel=\"bookmark\" title=\"Permanent link to this entry\">Permalink<\/a>&nbsp;|&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.autoblog.com\/forward\/19360488\/\" title=\"Send this entry to a friend via email\">Email this<\/a>&nbsp;|&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.autoblog.com\/2010\/02\/16\/detnews-fords-slow-revival-of-lincoln-taking-heat-from-dealers\/#comments\" title=\"View reader comments on this entry\">Comments<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Filed under: Car Buying, Lincoln, Luxury 2010 Lincoln MKT &#8211; click above for high-res image gallery In a nutshell, the problem with Lincoln is that on the Taurus SHO launch, Ford brought along an Audi A6 4.2 for comparison&#8217;s sake. Says one Lincoln dealer, &#8220;It&#8217;s hard to sell a $48,000 MKS when the Ford guy [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-329660","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329660","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=329660"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329660\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=329660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=329660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=329660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}