tbone

My thoughts on this exactly. I’ll wait to pass final judgment once all the details are available, but the pricing just doesn’t seem reasonable. Nothing against the dark horse name, but it doesn’t have the history behind it to try to push prices up, IMO.

Haha, interesting analogy. I actually liked the side profile of the gray one as a starting point but I didn’t build it out from there. Perhaps I’ll see how that one could evolve.

Yes, I’m aware regarding delivery. I’m thankful I do not to deal with those ridiculous fees with my dealer.

I think this has become a hidden profit center for Ford and is excessive. It certainly didn’t cost $1700 to ship our Explorer that we recently got from Chicago to our dealer. I understand they are average costing it for CONUS, but even privately shipping a vehicle doesn’t cost that much. Another way to lower the MSRP without actually lowering it.

I saw that yesterday. It makes sense for them. It’s not their core market, and it takes a lot to build a vehicle from scratch.

I had some time to kill so I thought I would throw some more concepts out there for discussion. These were done with Grok. I would have like to refine them a little bit more, but when it got down to the finer details, it wasn’t very responsive, or did not interpret my commands the way I would have liked. This last pic was from ChatGPT. It isn’t what I had in mind for this vehicle but I still thought it looked nice and included it anyway.

That is good business as far as I’m concerned. Small things like that make people come back.

I think the bronco already lends itself to having off-road credibility while still having good on road manners, which is why it’s been successful against the jeep. This new Lincoln doesn’t have to have greater capability than the bronco already has in my opinion, so focusing on refinement would be sufficient. As for customers, I think Lincoln needs to take steps to move down into the 40 to 60 range, an average income is good. Their next vehicles need to take great steps to shed that old timer image, even though I don’t think their current lineup suggest that. Something like a G wagon, competitor can help with that, but I also think they need something on the halo vehicle side that isn’t necessarily an SUV. I hate to say it, but getting in bed with major social media influencers could help drive that age down. I personally don’t get it, but young people love them, and they have helped grow various brands from scratch. I really think they need to get aggressive on this. Myself and my wife are probably considered in the old crowd at this point at 52, but I couldn’t get my wife to buy an Aviator because she thinks only old people drive them. Along with trying to rejuvenate the brand, I would like to see a new logo. I don’t find the Lincoln symbol to be very interesting, though this is just a minor quibble. I still have to believe that product is king, and if you build the right thing, everybody will want one. Whatever they come up with, I hope it’s great because this is the first thing to get excited about in a while for me.

I never referenced Toyota or any other brand in my statement, nor do I expect any machine to be perfect, but anytime there is a recall all most people will see is 4.4 million Ford vehicles impacted by a recall and they won’t even read past the headline to see it was only s/w that will be corrected by OTA. When you consider Ford had a record number of recalls last year, the average consumer will likely just think it’s more of the same. My point is, every recall matters whether simple or major, and your quality reputation is getting a death by a thousand cuts. Let’s see how the rest of 2026 goes before passing judgement on their quality improvements. I’m hoping we will see the progress.

A recall is a recall. The vehicle is a system of hardware and software. In the end, the customer is affected, which is all that matters.

I had a fleet Fusion the transmission went out on and it took a dealer two months to fix, because of a parts issue and not enough transmission techs. It didn’t affect me because I just picked up a different vehicle, but imagine if that was a private owner. It was quite ridiculous.

I don’t blame you. I wouldn’t pay that out principal, regardless whether I can afford it or not.

Did you see their last financials? It doesn’t appear they have too much money available.

Oh boy😬

While I applaud efforts to improve the customer service experience, I would say that’s a pretty optimistic goal. There are things they could be doing that will prevent their vehicles from having to be brought in for service In the first place. Bringing more parts manufacturing in house and not beating up suppliers to more effectively control parts quality and more efficient engineering to start with. Seems like engineering is heading that direction hopefully the other will as well.