Ford to Sink $5 Billion into Lincoln Revitalization

2015 Lincoln MKZ (Credit: Lincoln )

Pretty much everyone, except for a few delusional people, know that Lincoln is in serious brand. It’s come out that Ford has considered killing it, even recently under Alan Mullay. Thanks to new CEO Mark Fields, who is an unabashed believer in Lincoln, the luxury brand not only has survived the chopping block, but now is about to receive a huge infusion of funds that will be designed to give it a huge jolt.

“Huge” is probably an understatement, considering that the figure Reuters is reporting is $5 billion during a period of five years. To say that’s a huge gamble is definitely an understatement.

Before you think that a good majority of that money will go toward more Matthew McConaughey commercials, know that Reuters is also reporting that one of the Lincoln initiatives will be to create a modular platform, which is all the rage in the automotive industry right now. The chassis is called D6 and is being developed under the watchful gaze of Kuma Galhotra.

The rumor is that the D6 platform will bring rear-wheel drive back, which is something that has been painfully lacking from the brand for far too long. The point of pouring so much effort into the new platform is to take the fight straight to the Germans, like Mercedes and BMW, because that’s what everyone in the luxury market wants to do. Even if Lincoln doesn’t succeed at completely discrediting the 5 Series or C-Class, perhaps it will at least attain some legitimacy in the automotive market. Such a goal shouldn’t be too hard to attain, since it’s pretty much impossible to fall off the floor.

For now, it looks like there will be baby steps toward revitalizing Lincoln. Ford executives have said that the goal is to turn out 300,000 annual unit sales by 2020, which would triple the anemic amount that is being churned out lately. Tripling the sales volume has been called delusional by some automotive industry experts, but they failed to take into account the incredible sales effect hiring Jim Carrey to do a few commercials could have.