Lincoln Mark LT Put to Death

Its name harkened back to the best Lincolns of days past. Unfortunately, the Lincoln Mark LT was nothing more than a really nice Ford F-150 pickup truck with lots of bling. Slow sales — Lincoln sold just 28,117 Mark LTs from its 2005 debut through July — are the main reason the company is dumping the model after the 2008 model year, but streamlining efforts are also to blame.

According to Automotive News, Lincoln will focus on its cars and crossovers in the future. However, one of Lincoln’s best-sellers is still the Navigator SUV, which sports lots of chrome itself. Truck buyers looking for a classy pickup will have to wait until the redesigned F-150 rolls out in 2009 sporting a “Platinum” edition.

Comments

Did they learn from the Lincoln Blackwood?

Haven't we been here before. The Blackwood. The truck with the wood flipgate and Lincoln badging??? My, how we forget the lessons of the past. Who wants to buy a luxury pickup truck??? What are you going to haul? Your ego??

People actually buy luxury pickups- Escalade EXT, Hummer H2 SUT. The LT just wasn't hip enough for those people.

Escalade EXT, a luxury pickup? Yes
Hummer H2 SUT, a luxury pickup? No
The Mark LT looks too Ford F150ish. At least Cadillac didn't make the Escalade EXT look like a fancy Avalanche with chrome; that's the reason why Ford failed twice on this attempt.

It is truly sad that Ford can not do anything positive with the Lincoln brand.
Lincoln needs a total over haul of it's entire line up including the navigator.
Give each vehicle a name instead of the three letter curse.
Cadillac has moved so far in front of Lincoln.

To me, it's a niche market that was either hit or miss. In this case, a miss. Now, create a highend pickup that's entirely new from the gound up, and they may have something. In the mean time, an F-150 wearing a Suit/Tie instead of blue jeans is still an F-150.

Begone 4 speed automatic!

How executives at Lincoln can make the same bad decision not once but twice and still keep their jobs is flabergasting! (where do I sign up?)

I'd love to have been at that meeting:

"Look we know that the Blackwood is the most embarrasing flop we've ever done, but the concept will work. Let's try it one more time but this time we'll only change the grill on an F-150 and put the dash from the Navigator. I'm sure people will pay a $20k premium on it. It's not like your average chop shop could do the exact same thing, and probably cheaper."

I don't think many people really like to pay so much for a truck, they would choose the Navigator instead.

The best thing is we will see this again. Three is the charm and unless we missed it, there have only been two. I guess they will try to make a re-badged Fusion or Edge into cars and crossovers people will pay a premium for...oh wait...they already have.

The Mark LT didn't even have the dashboard from the Navigator. It had the same interior (for the most part) as the F-150. Nothing special about this truck at all....

Mark LT a failure? They sold over 28,000 units at a $20,000 markup. That's over a half a billion dollars of profit. I'd love to fail like that.

Now just kill off the Navigator. Every time I see one (which isn't often) it reminds me of those robot sentries from Disney's 1979 movie, The Black Hole.