Lincoln C

Lincoln C

by CarLustBlog.com at 10:46 AM PST, March 2, 2009

The interesting, surprising, thoroughly Lust-worthy little fellow shown at right held pride of place in the Ford section of the Cleveland Auto Show. It's about as long as a Focus, or my GTI, and a bit wider, wide enough to seat three across without too much squeezing. It has a four-cylinder turbocharged direct-injected engine which produces an "estimated" 180 HP (according to a Ford press release) mated to a dual-clutch gearbox similar to Volkswagen's DSG. That combination would be enough for some serious straight-line zip in a car this size. The fat tires on the 20" wheels promise equivalent cornering.

Oh, and the surprising part?

It's a Lincoln.

For those of us who grew up in the 1970s, when "Lincoln" meant "immense, vinyl-roofed, opera-windowed wallowing large-barge Detroit battleship sedan for members of the 101 Strings Fan Club," the idea of a small, light Lincoln with a performance envelope in hot-hatch territory is a little hard to get your mind wrapped around. Still, there it was on the turntable, and it looked as cool and futuristic as a car-show concept should look.

The Lincoln C's suicide center-opening doors are a deliberate callback to the legendary '61 Continental.

The interior has contoured bench seats with discreet detailing laser-etched into the white leather.

They look like something out of Star Trek or the Ikea catalog, and are said by those who have sat in them to be quite comfortable. On the other hand, there's a lack of lateral support bolsters that could prove problematic during a speed run down the twisties.

The gray trim, which is said to be recycled driftwood, looks very sharp against the white interior. The lack of armrests on the doors might be an issue, though.

The no-center steering wheel and the Bride of the Andromeda Strain electronic instrument panel with on-board wireless Internet in the passenger seat (see Ford's demonstration video here, starring "Eva from Uncanny Valley" as the voice of the computer) have that nice twenty-minutes-into-the-future look, but the ergonomics may be a bit much. The Lincoln-star-shaped glass roof panel looks neat, but would require a funny-shaped roof stamping and perhaps a fair bit more welding than the normal production car. A lot of these "features" are the sort of nifty show-car details that rarely make it into production.

The brakes looked intriguing, too.

It's not a disc, it's a ring, and the brake calipers seem to be on the inside of the ring. Cross-drilled, no less. The official Ford pitch-man did not know anything about them--wasn't in the PR script, I guess--but they seem like the sort of geeky little hidden engineering improvement that could turn out to be very important someday.

There's a lot to like about the Lincoln C, providing it lives up to its promised performance. The reports from the professional automotive press (for example, 1, 2, 3) seem to indicate that Ford is seriously exploring putting something like the C concept into production. Build one with front buckets and a proper stick shift, and you could get me hooked.

The action shot at the top of the article, and the photo at right, are official Ford press release photos. The others were taken by your humble narrator at the Cleveland Auto Show.

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