Lincoln dealers troubled by a lack of new products are promised a new lineup by 2015 that will more than double current sales levels.
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Ford to invest $1 billion into troubled Lincoln brand
First Drive: 2012 Volkswagen Tiguan At first blush, Munich seems like an awfully long way to travel for the chance to drive a mid-cycle refresh. But Volkswagen has good reason to ask us to schlep across the Atlantic to drive its updated-for-2012 Tiguan: Momentum. Official: Volkswagen rolls out new Beetle with Black Turbo Launch Edition [UPDATE] Called the Black Turbo Launch Edition, this limited-run Volkswagen will represent the first 600 examples of the new Beetle to hit American dealerships.
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What you missed on 6.13.11
Filed under: Ford , Lincoln , Earnings/Financials In late 2010, Lincoln outlined a plan to cut 175 of its 500 metropolitan dealerships. The goal was to eliminate redundancy, while at the same time giving the remaining stores a better chance to succeed. Six months into the plan, Bloomberg reports that The Blue Oval has so far cut 100 of those dealers, bringing the total amount of retail outlets in the top 130 markets to 400. The next step for the remaining dealers is to upgrade their facilities to include new training and staffing standards and perks like free car washes in the hopes of meeting or exceeding the buying experience at Lexus or BMW stores
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Ford cuts 20% of metropolitan Lincoln dealers
Filed under: Car Buying , Ford , Lincoln Being a Lincoln dealer in the 21st century has been anything but easy, as Ford has been looking to shed its luxury brand dealers the past couple years. Then Blue Oval recently killed off Mercury , a brand Lincoln dealers traditionally used as a feeder program. And perhaps the biggest challenge has been coaxing buyers into the showroom, as the brand’s 2010 sales total of just 85,828 units clearly illustrates. The sledding apparently won’t get much easier for 2011 either, as Automotive News reports that Ford has added a few more regulations to be completed by October of this year
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Report: Ford spells out new standards for Lincoln dealers
Filed under: Crossover , Lincoln , Reviews , Luxury Competing Against Edge More Than Other Luxury CUVs 2011 Lincoln MKX – Click above for high-res image gallery With Mercury dead , hundreds of former Lincoln-Mercury dealerships will be forced to rely on Ford’s 93-year-old luxury brand to bring home the bacon alone. These dealers are nervous about their future, and rightfully so. Every Lincoln on sale today is a gussied up version of a Ford . True, most mainstream automakers with luxury divisions, like Toyota/Lexus, Honda/Acura and Volkswagen/Audi, use a similar strategy of platform and technology sharing to save costs, but U.S.
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Review: 2011 Lincoln MKX
Filed under: Lincoln , Earnings/Financials , Luxury Lincoln has apparently had enough of small-town life. According to Automotive News , Ford’s luxury brand plans to give its dealerships in metropolitan areas the lion’s share of production moving forward. The company says luxury buyers are typically centered around larger cities, and as such, up to 85 percent of the company’s inventory will go to its dealers in the 130 largest U.S. markets in the future
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Report: Lincoln skews volume toward urban centers, unnerves small town dealers