Lincoln Blackwood |
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Wikipedia: Lincoln Blackwood
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History
The following section is an excerpt from Wikipedia's Lincoln Blackwood page on 11 September 2016, text available via the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
The Lincoln Blackwood is a pickup truck that was marketed by the Lincoln division of Ford Motor Company. Marketed in the United States and Mexico, it was the first pickup truck ever sold by the Lincoln division. Due to poor sales, it was only marketed in the United States for the 2002 model year and in Mexico for the 2002 and 2003 model year, making it the shortest-produced vehicle by the division.
The Blackwood was a luxuriously-trimmed version of the Ford F-150 Crew Cab pickup truck, and was greeted with enthusiasm after its debut at the North American International Auto Show in January 1999. Lincoln's success with the Lincoln Navigator emboldened the company to pursue the first-ever luxury pickup truck, and Cadillac was in hot pursuit with the Cadillac Escalade EXT.
The Blackwood was only available in rear wheel drive, SuperCrew cab configuration, with black exterior and interior. The truck bed was built as a trunk, with a power tonneau and plush carpeting. The box was manufactured from plastic composites but lined with stainless steel. The exterior of the bed featured aluminum pinstripes over artificial burled black wood. The Blackwood came with only one option, which was a navigation system with a 5" color screen. All of these luxury features limited the practical usability of the Blackwood, and stood in stark contrast to the more utilitarian Cadillac, which was available with four-wheel drive. Only 3,356 Blackwoods were made in just 15 months of production, with the final models selling well below invoice. Retail price was to be US$52,500. Lincoln had originally hoped for about 18,000 projected sales in 2002 and 2003, but had announced the discontinuation of the Blackwood before the 2002 model year was over. Among the factors behind the Blackwood's failure were high price and limited cargo versatility.
The Blackwood was delivered late, with first sales in October 2001, due to a supply problem with the cargo box, produced by Magna Steyr. Ford reportedly froze their contracts with Magna International for part of 2001 over the issue. The Blackwood was manufactured at Kansas City Assembly in Claycomo, Missouri, through December 2002.
Lincoln recreated their unique luxury pickup truck as the Mark LT in the 2006 model year. However, they did not repeat many of the mistakes made with the Blackwood—particularly its lack of options and versatility. The Lincoln Mark LT was discontinued after the 2008 model year in the United States, but sold in Mexico through 2014.
Neiman Marcus Edition
Fifty special Blackwoods were built for the 2001 Neiman Marcus spring catalog. These Neiman Marcus Edition Blackwoods featured the company logo stitched into the headrests, a leather-wrapped rear-console lid with a 7-inch Panasonic wide-screen LCD DVD/Video-CD/CD player with wireless headphones and a cooler/warmer. This special Blackwood was priced at US$58,800.
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2002 Photo by "Morven" View photo of Lincoln Blackwood - 426KB Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled "GNU Free Documentation License". |
| Date | Article | Author/Source |
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| 16 October 2002 | Bye, Bye Blackwood | World News Syndicate, Ltd. |
