How can the same company produce a vehicle as good as the Taurus, and then a vehicle as bad as the Lincoln Flex?

The vehicle itself is pointless (the Flex is too expensive and not selling…why would a more expensive Lincoln version sell any better).

Ford takes one step forward with the Taurus and 10 steps back with this…”thing”.

Oh well…I am sure there is someone out there who wants to waste their money on a “near-luxury” station wagon.

I’ll take an Enclave.

(Since they didn’t do that, why haven’t they killed the Navigator?)

Go ahead, try and sell a luxury crossover from a moriund brand with worse-than-normal depreciation in a recession. Let me know how it goes.

If I were a Lincoln product manager, I would have been concentrating on making the MKS and (especially) the MKZ better, ensuring that they’re safe buys, so that when things turn around and buyers might upgrade, they’ll consider the MKT. Or at least might do so if the nose wasn’t so incredibly tacky.

Lincoln has a shot, here. The base product is reliable, conservative and capable, and the service is generally excellent. Build the base, outlast Cadillac, and there’s a chance if the market recovers.

First, there’s the small matter of millions of SUVs out there, whose owners are seriously backwards on their loans.

However, the SUV loophole in CAFE killed wagons, created SUV’s and moved Soccer Mom’s into them and Minivans.

Fixing CAFE, bringing back the family wagon and having SUV’s for what they were created for – enclosed pickups, is a good move.

But this! This turns the last few years of decent design into self caricature.

What is it about American designers? Why do they have to stretch, twist and ultimately violate their own designs (Cadillac, perhaps, aside).

This thing looks like – in black – it would have made a great Joker Mobile for the poor bastard who OD after his film zenith in the last Batman.

Oh! Well! Maybe it’ll steal share from the Escalade.

Honestly, GM and Ford, save some money. Just stick gold ornaments and leather innards on the badge-engineered Suburban and Expedition and call it a day. They will sell as many as they do now, but your profit will be higher.

The Chrysler Pacifica, Mercedes R-Class and twin-under=the-skin Flex already died for this sin. Or, as the Brits say, it falls between two stools. So to speak.

Don’t much like the baleen front end that has become the Lincoln trademark, but the rest is okay.

but acura is coming out with some sort of vehicle in this shape, and toyota just came out with the venza.

i’m sure they could still be horrible flops (and i’m hoping they are, since maybe resources could stop being wasted on these things), but i suppose there is at least some evidence that there maybe is a market.