2000 Lincoln LS Sedan (RHD)

Description

Shortly after the Ford Motor Company acquired Jaguar in 1990, a plan was hatched to develop an all-new rear-wheel-drive platform to be shared by Jaguar, Ford and Lincoln. Ford’s CEO, Australian Jacques (‘Jaq’) Nasser had head-hunted Dr Wolfgang Reitzler (from BMW) to head the Premier Automotive Group (PAG), comprising Aston Martin, Jaguar, Land Rover, Lincoln and Volvo. The new platform (DEW98) would form the basis of three discrete cars, the Jaguar S-Type, Lincoln LS and Ford Thunderbird. The Lincoln was billed as an ‘agile-handling luxury sport sedan’ which certainly got the attention of the US motoring press, because the marque had never been known for either agility or a sporting character. PAG’s initial plan had been to call the six-cylinder edition LS6 and the V8 LS8, but Lexus management expressed concern that this might cause confusion with its premium LS400 model, so the new Lincoln became simply ‘LS’. The car was touted as a rival for midsize models from BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Audi. While the Jaguar S-Type was a retro design with clear references to the first-gen car of the same name (launched in 1964), the Lincoln displayed elegant, understated styling with muscular rear haunches that ensured it looked right at home in the carparks of country clubs across North America. The LS was produced in right-hand-drive, predominantly for the Canadian and Japanese markets, and was never imported into Australia. The 3.0-litre V6 and 4.0-litre V8 engines were shared with the Jaguar, but while there was an ultra-high-performance variant of the Jaguar known as the S-Type R, the Lincoln flagship was the 4.0-litre sedan as seen here. The LS was produced from 1999 to 2006 with a total volume of 262,500, which pretty well matched the numbers of S-Types made in the same period.