1966 Lincoln Continental on 2040-cars

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Ford announces four recalls, 1.4M vehicles affected

Ford is taking a bit of the spotlight away from General Motors, announcing a major group of recall campaigns, covering a total of 1.4 million vehicles built between 2006 and 2013.
Let's start with the big one, which covers the Ford Escape, Mercury Mariner and, according to The Detroit News, Ford-built Mazda Tribute CUVs. 915,216 vehicles are covered, all of which were built in model years 2008 to 2011. 736,000 vehicles are in the US, while Canada then Mexico make up the vast majority of the remainder. The problem is due to an issue with the torque sensor in the steering column, which could lead to sudden power steering failure. Manual steering would still be available, though.
"Dealers will perform one of three service fixes, depending upon what diagnostic codes are shown when the vehicle is taken to the dealer," Ford spokeswoman Kelli Felker wrote to Autoblog in an email. "They will either update software for the power steering control module and the instrument cluster module; replace the torque sensor; or replace the steering column, which includes upgraded power steering control module software."

Junkyard Gem: 1988 Lincoln Mark VII LSC

The Lincoln Division put the Continental Mark VI on the Panther platform for the 1980 through 1983 model years, making it much smaller than its vast Mark V predecessor but not much nimbler and certainly not as opulent. For the 1984 model year, though, the new Continental Mark VII moved onto the Fox platform, making it sibling to the Mustang and therefore more of a true high-performance luxury coupe. By 1986, the Continental name was gone from the Mark VII (relegated to Lincoln's cushy land yachts), and the LSC version came with the same hairy V8 as the Mustang GT. Today's Junkyard Gem is one of those cars, found in a Denver yard last month. For the 1988 model year, the base Mark VII got the axe, leaving only the Bill Blass Edition and the LSC. Sadly, the Bill Blass Mark VII didn't come with an inflatable Sherman tank. For 1988, all Mark VIIs came with the 225-horsepower 5.0-liter High Output V8 engine, same as the Mustang GT.  Could you get a manual transmission? Sadly, you could not. Swapping one into one of these cars is pretty easy, but the more likely swap has always been to grab the 5.0 out of a Mark VII and drop it into a non-V8 Fox Mustang. If you were shopping for a BMW 5-Series or Mercedes-Benz E-Class in 1988, the Mark VII offered an attractive Detroit alternative. The 1988 LSC cost $25,016 (about $58,200 in 2021 bucks), while a new BMW 528e cost $31,500 and had a mere 127 horsepower. The M5 had a wild six with 256 horses— 31 more than the Mark VII— but it cost a terrifying $46,500. Meanwhile, the Mercedes-Benz 260E offered just 158 horses and cost $37,250. Granted, both of the Germans offered manual transmissions, but approximately zero American luxury-car buyers actually wanted three pedals by the late 1980s. Truth be told, this car looked like a great value next to its Teutonic competitors at the time, more so than GM's and Chrysler's efforts of the late 1980s. Not quite 150,000 miles on the clock on this one. The Mark series continued through the Mark VIII and then that's all she wrote, Katie bar the door. This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings. Here's how you turn the ordinary into the extraordinary. This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings. To appreciate the Mark VII LSC, you must do three things: 1. Drive it. 2. Drive it. 3. Drive it. Related Video: This content is hosted by a third party.

Genesis cars win accolades, offer value — so why are sales so bad?

My high-school buddy Brent Cormier was so smitten with the Genesis G80 when he saw it at an event I hosted at SXSW in 2016 he bought a used 2013 Hyundai Genesis a short time later and fell in love with the car. "It surpasses my every expectation," said Cormier, a self-described "renaissance man" who owns and runs a real estate agency with his wife Laura, is a food service executive chef and part owner of Austin-based Thin the Herd Guitars. "I was locked into Mercedes and Audi for 10 years," he added. "And felt trapped in an endless pit of maintenance costs." After owning the Genesis over the past two years — including using it as an Uber and Lyft driver to earn extra cash — Cormier learned what some frugal luxury sedan buyers and a handful of car reviewers have discovered: Genesis offers great bang for the buck compared to other premium brands and can compete with the best in terms of performance, features and comfort. Hyundai's luxury brand also earned a prominent third-party endorsement last week when for the first time Genesis topped J.D. Power's 2018 APEAL study, surpassing German luxury-performance icon Porsche. The APEAL study (which stands for Automotive Performance, Execution and Layout) "measures owners' emotional attachment and level of excitement across 77 attributes," ranging from performance to comfort, and asks nearly 68,000 owners of new 2018 models to score vehicles on a 1,000-point scale. In its second year ranked as a stand-alone brand, Genesis earned an APEAL score that bumped it up 15 points to 884 and helped push it past Porsche — and past BMW, Lincoln, Mercedes-Benz, Audi, Volvo, Cadillac, Land Rover and Lexus, in order of ranking. Last month, Genesis also topped J.D. Power's Initial Quality Survey (IQS) for the first time this year. And both its models were awarded Top Safety Pick Plus ratings by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, among 11 Plus ratings in all for Korean vehicles. Despite high J.D. Power rankings and great reviews, Genesis U.S. sales were off 50 percent for the first six months of 2018 compared to 2017, and in June Genesis sold only 796 vehicles — the first time U.S. numbers dropped below 1,000 in a month. Part of Genesis's APEAL and IQS success can be attributed to its small product lineup: just two models, the G80 and G90 sedans, with a third, the 2019 G70, launching later this year. And while those numbers may help in J.D.