The Lincoln Continental Is Dead Stateside, Production Moving To China
3 Jul 2020, 15:22 UTC ·
by Mircea Panait
After merely four years of production, the Ford Fusion with a fancier badge and cooler trim for the interior will bite the dust. Lincoln has confirmed that 2020 is the final model year of the Continental in the United States, and along with it, the MKZ will be gone from the lineup as well.
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As highlighted by Automotive News, the luxury brand is going all in on utilities because that’s where the money is. Curiously, the front- and all-wheel-drive sedan will soldier on in the Middle Kingdom.
“But wait, the Continental isn’t made in China!” You are 100-percent right, dearest reader, but luxury sedans still are popular in the Asian country. Therefore, production will shift from Flat Rock to a Chinese plant that Ford has yet to name. Cadillac did the same thing to the CT6, discontinuing it stateside while shifting production to the People’s Republic.
Turning our attention back to the United States, the Lincoln brand won’t have a single passenger car in the lineup for the 2021 model year. Ford has recently stopped production of the Fusion as well, leaving the Mustang alone in a sea of crossovers and unibody or truck-based SUVs.
General Motors and Fiat Chrysler have yet to abandon passenger cars altogether, and curiously enough, Cadillac plans to get back in the game with an all-electric model. After rolling out the CT4 and CT5 with internal combustion, the Celestiq will launch next year as the luxury automaker’s flagship sedan on the BEV3 platform of the Lyriq crossover.
FCA is electrifying Dodge and Jeep. A mild-hybrid option for the Durango, plug-in hybrid versions of the Wagoneer, Grand Wagoneer, and Wrangler, and the all-electric Wrangler are only a few of the newities that have been confirmed so far, either directly or indirectly.
Excluding the 300, Charger, and Challenger, the peeps at Chrysler have no conventional cars in the pipeline as far as we know.
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