History
During the late 1970s, Ford did not have as much development capital to spend on its vehicles as General Motors, which led to the high usage of badge engineering to save money. Although they had used unique platforms, powertrain, and bodies as recently as the late 1950s, the full-size Ford and Mercury product lines differed only in grille and trim. Until the Versailles, however, care had generally been taken to give Lincolns a distinct appearance and feel, in order to hide their sometimes humble origins although by the 1970s the similarities were very apparent. However, by mid-decade, even the Continental shared a number of components with Ford products.
The aftermath of the 1973 fuel crisis also exposed a significant hole in the Lincoln lineup: Lincoln had no smaller luxury cars to compete with foreign automakers (primarily the Mercedes-Benz E-Class) and Cadillac, which introduced the Seville in 1975. While the Seville shared its underpinnings with the Chevrolet Nova, it had been modified to the point that General Motors gave it a separate platform designation.
Read more about this topic: Lincoln Versailles
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The principle office of history I take to be this: to prevent virtuous actions from being forgotten, and that evil words and deeds should fear an infamous reputation with posterity.”
—Tacitus (c. 55–117)
“Psychology keeps trying to vindicate human nature. History keeps undermining the effort.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“To care for the quarrels of the past, to identify oneself passionately with a cause that became, politically speaking, a losing cause with the birth of the modern world, is to experience a kind of straining against reality, a rebellious nonconformity that, again, is rare in America, where children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)