1964 Lincoln Continental Convertible on 2040-cars

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Lincoln needs a farewell address, not a new marketing plan

The trouble with Ford's Lincoln brand is that no one cares about it any more.
Not long after I heard that Mark LaNeve, chief operating officer of Ford agency Team Detroit, was moving to take over direct operations of the New York ad agency Hudson Rouge for Lincoln, I heard that JCPenney CEO Ron Johnson was ousted. The two events are connected.

Five cursed and haunted cars

Any kid lucky enough to grow up in Detroit is familiar with the Henry Ford Museum. It's huge, full of shiny things and a great place to take a child and let them burn off some energy. After several field trips and weekend outings however, the dusty concept vehicles and famous aircraft tend to lose their punch for youngsters. As a fifth grader, I was already gazing on the museum's many gems with glassy eyes. On yet another school trip, we made our way to John F. Kennedy's death car, a gleaming black Lincoln limo. The aging volunteer docent told our little group something I had never heard before. "You know, this car is haunted. Several employees have reported seeing a gray presence right here," he said, pointing to the back passenger side seat. I perked up. Now here was something I had never heard before. A haunted car? Sure, it happened in Goosebumps, but this was real life. It made sense, in a way. Cars can be violent, emotional places. That's certainly the case with JFK's limo, as well as the other four cars on this list. And maybe those gut-wrenching deaths can permanently doom a car. 5. Archduke Franz Ferdinand's Graf & Stift Death Limo World War I tends to be a forgotten war, despite being pretty terrible in its own right and setting the stage for the entire 20th Century. The French forces, for instance, lost more lives in the first month of WWI than the US did in the entire Civil War. Everyone who has been through a freshman world history course knows the conflict started when Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife were shot by a Bosnian anarchist. The crazy thing is, Ferdinand had already avoided an attempt on his life that day, and was actually on his way to the hospital to comfort those who had been injured in the crossfire. One of the would-be assassins simply walked out of a cafe and saw his intended target sitting in front of him where the open-air limo had stalled. The archduke and his wife were shot through their heads and throats. Their deaths would not be the last caused by the limo. Throughout the war and into the 1920s, the limo was owned by fifteen different people and involved in six accidents and thirteen deaths, not counting the 17 million or so killed in the war triggered by the Archduke's assassination. The first person to own the car after the Archduke was an Austrian general named Potiorek, who went insane while riding in the car through Vienna.

Preposed class-action lawsuit targets 'defective' MyFord Touch

A national law firm, Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP, has filed a proposed class action lawsuit whose presupposition is that MyFord Touch is defective. Specifically, the complaint states that the system - as well as the MyLincoln Touch and MyMercury Touch clones - often freeze, fail to respond to voice or touch commands and have issues connecting to mobile phones.
According to Hagens Berman managing partner Steve Berman, MyFord Touch is a theoretically "brilliant idea" that falls short in actual execution. Said Berman in a press release, "In reality, the system is fundamentally flawed, failing to reliably provide functionality, amounting to an inconvenience at best, and a serious safety issue at worst."
Other MFT issues enumerated within the 41-page filing include problems controlling the window defroster, rear-view camera and navigation system. The suit maintains that Ford is aware of the problem but has yet to submit a workable and acceptable solution to MFT customers. Scroll down if you'd like to read the full press release.