In the automotive world, sometimes the best news is that which was ?entirely unexpected.
The New York Auto Show blessed us with many wonderful surprises this year, but one of the most shocking also stirred up an impressive amount of controversy. Lincoln is planning to bring back the Continental nameplate to spark a radical revival of its lineup, beginning with the Continental Concept that is allegedly production-ready.
While the Continental might be exactly what Lincoln needs in order to survive as a company, the concept has not been met with entirely enthusiastic responses. In fact, I believe the Continental Concept leans too heavily upon the exterior styling of a coincidentally named sedan: the Bentley Continental ?Flying Spur.
Bentley chief designer Luc Donckerwolke seems to share my opinion. In a Facebook comment that has since been deleted, Donckerwolke asked the chief designer at Lincoln, “Do you want us to send the product tooling?”
Donckerwolke certainly has a point; when viewed side-by-side, the two sedans are remarkably similar-looking. Fortunately — for Bentley’s sake — this extreme similarity doesn’t appear to translate to the interior.
While it is obviously upscale, the interior of the Lincoln concept is ?irrefutably American.
Regardless of how you feel about this particular incident, there is no mistaking the endless overborrowing of design cues and silhouettes that plagues the ?contemporary auto industry.
Take, for example, the rear-quarter window curvature BMW made iconic not so long ago; today, this ?overdone design element can be found on vehicles from ?every corner of the globe.
I believe the industry’s stifling of new ideas and overall resistance to significant change can be traced back to the demands of the market.
Immersed within a culture obsessed with designer labels, overt status symbols and conspicuous consumption, we no longer truly desire good design or revolutionary thought the way we ought to.
Instead, we go for a vehicle that cannot be mistaken for anything other than an iconic brand, praising the idea of good design but not necessarily actively ?considering it.
Along those same lines, however, one could raise the question of whether or not good design is only for the wealthy, as was traditionally the case.
Today, beauty can be found in even bread-and-butter, middle-class sedans such as the Mazda6. Since this shift has occurred, are luxury designers becoming more dependent upon trite cues and overdone lines?
Long a brand stuck with a major identity crisis, Lincoln certainly needs a fresh start.
With a current lineup that hardly communicates any sort of pretty aesthetic, Lincoln needs to take a radically new approach. Does the answer to rectifying its woeful sales lie in replaying old clichés? I don’t believe so, and I hope Lincoln comes to realize this sooner rather ?than later.
sjdickma@indiana.edu
