The question that seems to be lingering on the lips of anybody working at Lincoln for the past, well, let’s just say few decades, is “are we there yet?” The Blue Oval’s sole premium or near premium brand has tried to rejuvenate itself over and over again, but without any success.
No thanks in part to the botched launch of the all-new MKZ, Lincoln’s sales in 2013 are down 23.7 percent to just 15,899 units (January through March) over last year, when at the same time, Ford recorded a 12.4 percent increase to 582,584 deliveries.
We’ll have to wait and see what the new 2013 MKZ will do for the troubled brand once Ford solves the production delay problems and possibly re-launch the sedan (from a marketing standpoint), but in the meantime, we can tell you that Lincoln is working on another new car, which will once again, try to address all that is wrong with the company’s cars.
In this scoop video, which comes to us courtesy of KGP SpyPhotography, we see a very strange-looking Ford Fusion sedan with an extended rear-overhang plus visibly wider front and rear tracks. What we’re looking at here is a test mule for the next generation MKS, with Ford engineers testing the premium mid-size sedan’s underpinnings and mechanical hardware under the modified body of a Fusion.
It’s worth mentioning that the new 2016 MKS will be one of the first production models from Lincoln to be penned under the direction of the company’s design boss and former Cadillac stylist Max Wolf, who joined the company in 2010 after the 2013 MKZ’s design had been finalized. Ford insiders have said that, the new MKS, which will rival the like of the Acura RLX and Cadillac XTS, will be introduced in 2015 as a 2016MY.
Screen shot and Video Credits: KGP SpyPhotography / YouTube
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