Is the MKZ A Winner After All? If So, What Does That Say About Us?

The Lincoln MKZ has come in for a fair amount of abuse from the automotive press, particularly here at TTAC. The Cadillac ATS, on the other hand, has the press literally doing flips.

In April of 2013, however, the American consumer chose the MKFusion LOLZ Edition over the Autobahn-bred Cadillac CTS. And the American consumer chose the Steer-The-Script-Disaster-Chunky-Butt-Mobile over the even more sporty and awesome cancer-curing ATS.

Luckily, the two Cadillacs together managed to outsell the MKZ. By a little bit.

What’s this mean?

Your humble author is passionate about both Lincoln and Cadillac, perhaps foolishly so. Some time ago, I threw my hat in Lincoln’s corner. My belief at the time, which I continue to hold, is that both companies should be in the business of building real American luxury cars, not fake BMWs. This will be doubly true as fuel economy pressures continue to mount and things like an established record of selling hybrid MKZs start to matter. In the year 2035 you won’t be able to rely on speed or handling to build your image, not when twenty-year-old used Camry V6es are capable of kicking the ass of any of the 4500-pound, two-cylinder-super-turbo-charged hybrid slugs that the combined effects of regulation and consumer demand are sure to make the default choice in the near-luxury market. The performance landscape of 2035 probably looks a lot like the performance landscape of 1975, with exploding batteries playing the time-honored part of “Thermal Reactor”.

This month of MKZ triumph might be an aberration. It might just be pent-up demand from when the cars were legitimately hard to get. We won’t know until a few more months have come and gone. Still… I pulled my Town Car up next to an MKZ on the road two nights ago. In the twilight, the car looked big, sleek, luxurious, unashamedly different with its Kamm tail and full-width LED stretched across it. It has some gravitas. It looks interesting. The ATS and new CTS, by contrast, look like timid versions of the original CTS. They’re less interesting-looking than the outgoing STS. Most critically, they’re both stuck in that face-down-ass-up wedge profile that Bruno Sacco made briefly luxurious with the W124 but which is now primarily associated in the American mind with Kia and Hyundai.

Given a choice, I’d take a proper modern Continental and a set of battery terminals to the perineum over the MKZ — but there’s no choice available at the moment. It’s MKZ or nothing. More specifically, it’s MKZ or ATS. And right now, the MKZ is winning.