Lincoln, a fragile Premium brand
- The Lincoln brand represents the top of the range of the Ford group, thus competing for decades with the Cadillac brand of the GM group. It could have taken over the customers of the Mercury brand (mid -range brand of the Ford group ended in 2010) but apparently it only occurred in half, because even if Lincoln sales doubled between 2009/2010 and 2022, it is mainly because this brand was marketed on the Chinese market from the end of the 2010s and that it was able to attract a new customer –basis who were looking for premium models.
- Despite this recent establishment in China, the Lincoln brand seems fragile, as its sales volumes remain relatively low (less than 200,000 worldwide sales per year, i.e. less than half the volume of Cadillac), its sales have collapsed in the United States and a departure from China in the long term is not a totally improbable scenario.
- In fact, we observe that Chinese customers have been buying more and more cars from Chinese brands for several years (54% of passenger car sales in China over 5 months 2023 compared to 49% over 5 months 2022), increasingly abandoning foreign cars, and brands with low sales volumes (such as Lincoln) are the most threatened.
- Additionally, Lincoln duplicated Ford's strategy of removing sedans from the US market, thereby removing some of its traditional customer base. Finally, the Lincoln brand has not yet entered the era of electrification, which can be a problem if we compare it to other carmakers, in particular to German Premium brands.