So sad another brand falling to online shopping.  

They have to keep the Corsair, adding to the already established Nautilus import chain makes it easier  but agree, cost factors may be worrying. They have to find a way as it’s a fair chunk of sales.   Farley has changed plans so many times his head must be spinning, their assessment of threats headwinds is atrocious and smacks of wilful blindness.

I’m not sure why you defend Ford on this stuff so much.  Is the end function the same? Does the hood stay up in order to do whatever is necessary under it? The obvious answer is yes. This would be acceptable if the price ever went down, but it rarely does. Ford routinely removes features from its vehicles, and I believe more than just Ford enthusiast notice. Is it enough to get people to not buy them yet, hard to say.  Five years ago, you would’ve never heard me badmouth Ford, but these actions are reducing value for the customer are wearing me out. Much to my chagrin, my wife just bought a 26 explorer ST to replace her 22 model. I tried to discourage her from buying it, but in the end it’s hers and that’s what she picked. I’ll post some observations about the 26 when I have some more time.

You misunderstood me, my comments were aimed at you listening to wankers over on other sites. As a n LS owner you know the truth, the vehicles weren’t failures and in fact such a threat to J/LR that they lobbied For to kill all those projects you mentioned. I never understood Ford scrapping DEW for Lincoln s it was perfect for them and the T’Bird.     DEW was Ford harvesting a Jaguar developed platform for its own premium vehicles that Lincoln had the capacity to pay for where J/LR couldn’t which is why they (J/LR) needed to go as their product cycle renewal costs were more than the value of the brands, Tata agreeing to fund the $8 billion product cycle costs   By 2006, it was all getting too hard for Bill Ford and all he could see is money bleeding everywhere, pity some smart heads around him didn’t keep some of the gems like DEW to keep Lincoln going to a more upmarket level of vehicles.

Well so much for Ford's BS about under hood heat preventing them from installing air brakes on  650/750 when equipped with a 7.3.  Blue Bird has done a good job giving a driver  good forward visibility  with that steeply slanted hood.   Amazing they  figured out how to control heat associated with a compressor and Ford can't figure it out with a hood that has to  provide considerably more frontal area and I would assume a large under hood cavity than the Blue Bird.

That's what kinglouie1957 the owner of Biondi Lincoln said on his video that he got a call from Lincoln telling him they had built enough to last the year but that there would be a new one coming.  I would like to think that they will keep the Corsair going because dropping to just 3 models is not a good look for Lincoln but who knows.  Ford likes to change plans all the time and it really seems like Farley just doesn't care about the Lincoln brand at all.

Ford really milked that EB trim too quite a few models got it   Bronco  Bronco II Explorer Expedition  F-150   I saw a post in a Facebook car group where someone shared an Explorer Sport (2 door) with the Eddie Bauer trim which has to be pretty rare.  I also agree with what others said the green and gold were such an iconic color scheme on Ford SUVs then too.

Is that NOT what I said?  I mentioned it was an expensive platform and that other models were scrapped which kept it expensive and not being able to spread the costs among other models.  Thunderbird got a shorter version of DEW98 and Jaguar got the S-Type and later XF but those were the only 4 ever offered.  There was more planned for DEW98 but they never came.  I could be wrong but I am pretty sure they were looking at doing a Mark IX (MK9 and Mark X concepts) off of DEW98 and potentially a Lincoln crossover I think the Navicross concept was built on DEW98 as well as a new LS but all of that was scrapped.  JLR being upset about Lincoln having a piece of DEW98 killed a lot of the momentum Lincoln was getting back then.        It was supposed to turn the Lincoln brand around but only lasted 6 years.  It had one good year and sales dropped every year since introduction.  I had an LS I loved it to death I still love them when I see them on the road but the car was a failure otherwise it would still be around.  It needed a hotter version to compete with the CTS-V but we all know JLR would have never allowed it and it needed a more significant refresh in 2003.  The updates were nice but it needed better interior materials.  That silver plastic trim that Lincoln loved in the 2000s did not hold up well at all.   The other issue was the Zephyr which replaced it was like a step backwards in every way of what the LS was trying to do.  The only engine offered in the Zephyr was a 3.0 V6 which was the base engine for the LS and made less power 221 vs 232.  They fixed this in 2007 when it got the 3.5 but it still had less power than the LS V8.  Also the Zephyr and MKZ had a lot less features than the LS did in its refresh.    No power tilt telescope wheel - LS had No rear HVAC vents - LS had No heated rear seats - LS optional No rain sensing wipers - LS optional till 2004 No power adjustable pedals - LS had   MKZ didn't get some of those features till 2013 which is pretty crazy to think about.  The first gen Zephyr/MKZ was like a step backwards but you could argue the bean counters loved it, it shared a ton with the Fusion and Milan and thus was way more profitable than the LS.  But everything the LS tried to do image wise for Lincoln was undone with the Zephyr/MKZ.  Zephyr/MKZ was not sporty, had less features, was a lot closer to it's Ford/Mercury counterparts.  You could also make the argument too that it was far more reliable since the LS did have some quirkyness to them.  If the LS was a success those things wouldn't have gone away and Lincoln would have had a far more competitive mid size sedan in the luxury segment.   Again don't get me wrong I LOVED my LS I miss it a ton it was a great car.  I also love my current 2017 MKZ Black Label but it took a while for Lincoln to get it's mojo back and it caused them to revert to old habits after the LS was canceled.   Anyway my 2 cent rant.

It really is a shame. The plans for cd6 seemed so promising, and nothing came of it. I'm hoping this will be a better late than never situation where Ford gets smarter at leveraging platforms like cd6. 

It was none of that. DEW was an expensive platform that wasn’t shared with the affordable large vehicles but the Thunderbird used it in 2002-2005.   Jaguar Land Rover actively lobbied about Ford using it and raising Lincoln to the level of a competitor  so yeah, Lincoln LS was that good…..