Longer, wider, lower. As America embraced the consumer economy in the 1950s, America's automakers did their level best to persuade American consumers that more was, well, more. Between 1949 and 1969, the footprint of the basic Ford sedan grew 19 percent, for example. And even today, despite the oil shocks, the incursion of small cars from Europe and Asia, and today's financial meltdown, bigger is still regarded as better by many Americans.
It's easy to understand why. This is a big country, with a lot of wide open spaces. Gas is still cheap. And a full-size pickup with a V-8 engine and most of the trimmings costs less than many well-equipped six-cylinder midsize sedans. Put simply, America has had no real need to think small. But it will soon.
The automotive landscape in this country is going to change profoundly over the next decade. Driving that change will be tough, new fuel-consumption regulations and the growing realization among lawmakers, including some die-hard Republicans, that the price of gas will have to be increased to encourage consumers to buy those fuel-efficient vehicles. (It has not escaped Washington's attention that, while customers were eagerly lining up to buy hybrids in May last year when gas was $4 a gallon, there were some 600,000 unsold ones -- according to Mike Jackson, CEO of mega-dealer Auto Nation -- sitting on dealer lots around the country in February, when gas was hovering around $2 a gallon.)
The Lincoln Concept C is an attempt to reinvent the American luxury for this brave, new automotive world. It's a uniquely American take on a vehicle genre the Europeans and Asians have owned over the past 40 years.
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