The Lincoln Motor Company
The Lincoln Motor Company is a luxury vehicle division of the Ford Motor Company. Current Lincoln models are two sedans, the MKS and MKZ, two crossovers, the MKT and MKX, two sport utility vehicles, the Navigator and Navigator L, one pickup truck, the Mark LT, and one limousine, the MKT Livery.
Henry Leland, former manager of the General Motors Cadillac Division, and his son Wilfred, formed The Lincoln Motor Company in 1917 in honor of Abraham Lincoln, Leland’s hero for whom he had voted in 1864. Lincoln first assembled Liberty aircraft engines with Ford components under World War I government contracts.
After the war, the Lincoln factories retooled to build luxury cars. The company had severe financial problems during this transition; after producing only 150 cars in 1922, Lincoln went into bankruptcy and sold out to Ford, but Lincoln continued to operate somewhat independently from Ford through 1940.
The purchase of Lincoln was a personal triumph for Henry Ford, whom investors led by Leland had forced out of his second company. After the sellout to Ford, Lincoln quickly became a leading American best-selling luxury brand like Cadillac, Duesenberg, Packard, Peerless, and Pierce-Arrow.
The Lincoln Zephyr arrived for the 1936 model year as a brand of its own with a 12-cylinder, 4.4-liter engine. The Zephyr in its first year increased Lincoln sales nearly nine times. It was a separate brand until 1941 and then became a Lincoln model. When civilian production resumed after World War II, the Zephyr did not continue.
By then the Lincoln Motor Company had become the Lincoln Division of Ford Motor Company under more Ford control to modernize to compete better with the premium counterparts from Chrysler (Imperial) and General Motors (Cadillac). For 1956, Lincoln organized the Continental Division. The Continental Mark II was a two-door coupe. Instead of mounting a spare tire on the trunk as had Lincoln Continentals of the 1940s, the Mark II body had a tire-shaped hump. Otherwise, unlike many cars of the time, Mark II styling was conservative with relatively little chrome and no tailfins.
For the 1961 model year, Lincoln reduced its model lineup from three (Capri, Premiere, Continental Mark V) cars to one, the Lincoln Continental, with conservative styling and smaller size than the 1960 Lincolns. The Lincoln Continental convertible model was last American four-door production convertible. In 1966, a two-door model joined the four-door sedan and convertible, which went out of production in 1967.
In 1979, Ford and Mercury redesigned their full-sized cars on a new chassis, the first since 1968. In the 1980 model year, Lincoln presented the first new Continental since 1970, the Mark VI, which shared chassis and engine with Mercury and Ford, but no exterior or interior body parts were common. In 1981, Lincoln put the Continental name on hiatus when the Town Car became the standard Lincoln.
In 1988, the Continental became the first Lincoln with front-wheel drive. It was also the first Lincoln since 1949 without an eight-cylinder engine.
In 1990, the Lincoln Town Car had a major update, an all-new body and interior like the Mark VII and the Continental; a favorable market reception made it the 1990 Motor Trend Car of the Year. The 1991 Town Car was the first American car with an eight-cylinder, overhead-cam engine since the Duesenberg.
In 1993, the Mark VIII replaced the nine-year old Mark VII. The first Mark without the “Continental” nameplate, the Mark VIII, like the Ford Thunderbird and Mercury Cougar, had rear-wheel drive with independent rear suspension.
For 2000, Lincoln introduced its smallest car ever, the LS, a mid-sized sports sedan, unofficially the replacement for the Mark VIII. In 2002, Lincoln retired the Continental brand after 52 years of production. Having grown similar in size and styling to the Town Car, the Continental gave way to the LS, which itself vanished after 2006. The Town Car followed suit in 2011.
In 2012, Ford changed the name of the Lincoln Division back to the Lincoln Motor Company as Leland had named it. The Lincoln Motor Company plans to introduce several all-new vehicles in the years to come.
Visit the Lincoln website: www.lincoln.com
