The feel-good story of the decade is Ford’s miraculous turnaround from bleeding money to delivering some of the best looking and best selling products they’ve ever made. But all is not well for Ford Motor Company, as they’ve lost Mercury along the way, and Lincoln is languishing with an unimpressive lineup of semi-luxury cars.
But Ford has a plan, and it all starts with the Lincoln MKZ concept, designed to give Ford’s luxury brand a fresh new look. Also, a mustache.
Gone is the waterfall grille, replaced instead by this mustaschioed mid-size sedan that shares a platform with the 2013 Ford Fusion. Technology seems to be the focal point of this concept car, and the MKZ Concept has no shortage of that, featuring LED’s in the head lights, taillights, and even the digital cluster gauge. The roof features a huge sliding glass window, there is an 8-inch touchscreen LCD in the center console, and there is no transmission shifter, but rather buttons along the left side of the center stack.
Ford has been mum on engine options for the next MKZ, though expect the Lincoln to share Ford’s EcoBoost lineup (and perhaps only be available with it.) We also heard on the showroom floor that Ford may stuff the 3.5 liter EcoBoost V6 under the hood, providing 355 horsepower to the Blue Oval’s mid-size luxury contender. Couple that with all-wheel drive and lots of technology, and the revival of Lincoln is starting to look a lot brighter.