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Chief designer for Lincoln Aviator SUV is brand's new design director

The man behind the looks of cars like the 50th anniversary 2015 Ford Mustang, the current-generation Lincoln Continental and the luxury division’s new 2020 Aviator SUV is LincolnÂ’s newest design director. Kemal Curic replaces David Woodhouse, who left earlier this year and is now a vice president overseeing design at Nissan and Infiniti. Curic, 41, was born in Sarajevo and grew up in Germany and Croatia. He began his career with Ford of Europe in 2003 after earning a bachelorÂ’s degree in industrial design and a masterÂ’s in transportation design in Germany. There, he worked on the European version of the Fiesta, the Mondeo (the European version of the Fusion) and the Kuga compact SUV. aviator-4 View 38 Photos In 2010, Curic won a global sketch competition Ford created to pick a designer for the 50th anniversary Mustang. He moved to FordÂ’s headquarters in Dearborn, where he joined the design team for the 2015 Ford Mustang, which won the EyesOn Design award for Best Production Vehicle at the 2014 Detroit auto show. Curic became exterior design manager in 2014 for the reborn Lincoln Continental sedan, then lead the overhaul of the brandÂ’s design language. He became chief designer for the three-row Aviator, which debuted at the 2018 L.A. Auto Show, and he served a lead exterior designer on the all-new 2020 Corsair, LincolnÂ’s compact crossover that was formerly known as the MKC. In an interview earlier this month with Truck Trend, Curic talked about how the midsize Aviator exemplifies LincolnÂ’s new design ethos. “This is the anti-wedge, which is very elegant,” he said. “If you think about cars of the 1960s, they had that exuberant attitude with more anti-wedge than most vehicles today. Think about the angle of attack of an airplane. You have this gliding gesture, sort of leaning back. The anti-wedge, a teardrop shape, is also the most optimized shape for aerodynamics.” Curic has said he was captivated by American cars as a child growing up in Europe, and he told Truck Trend that he grew up doodling cars in his notebooks at school, which sometimes got him in trouble and made his parents worry. HeÂ’ll reportedly split his time between Dearborn and LincolnÂ’s design studio in Irvine, California, where he lives with his family.

2017 Lincoln Continental reimagined as a coupe

If nothing else, the production version of the Lincoln Continental has provided ample water-cooler fodder around the office. There are a few camps: the "it took guts to build it" folks giving credit where due on a handsome design with an ambitious interior, and the "MKZ misstep" group haranguing the Motor Company for blowing fancy new styling cues on a lesser beast. And yet, unifying forces exist. We can all agree that these artist renders depicting a Continental sans a pair of doors present a captivating notion. Back in 1939, the original Continental was a two-door. Over time, four doors of various types, including convertibles, infiltrated the lineup. The last time the Continental was on sale, it was a four-door front-driver based on the platform shared with the Mercury Sable and Ford Taurus. Even though the new production Continental, like that penultimate one, is based on a front-drive platform, the execution is much different. As you probably already know, it features a so-far unique 400-horsepower 3.0-liter V6 and an advanced torque-vectoring AWD system, standard. Some neat concept car touches, like the fancy door handles and patented 30-way adjustable seats, made it in. What a two-door would bring to the table is mainly stylistic, emphasizing the long parallel character line in the door with brightwork running under the window that's echoed in the lower door sculpting and chrome strip. It accentuates the car's length, and calls attention to the trim taillights and their interconnecting bar element. A longer door makes for a more elegant transition into the C-pillar. It makes the production Continental, with its blacked-out but still obviously chunky B-pillar, look fussy. We don't expect Lincoln to build a coupe – that may be too wild for a company that doesn't seem completely comfortable with the notion of reinvention – but these renders were just too good not to share. Let us know what you think in the comments below. Related Video:

Lincoln goes sedan-free after sending the Continental into the sunset

Lincoln has ended production of the 10th (and, presumably, final) generation of the Continental, according to a recent report. Built in Flat Rock, Mich., the flagship model was the last sedan in the company's range. We can't say the guillotine dropped without warning; the writing has been on the wall for months. Introduced in 2016 for the 2017 model year, the Continental found about 12,000 buyers in America during its first full calendar year on the market, but sales quickly dropped. 8,758 units were sold in 2018, followed by 6,586 in 2019. 3,872 examples found a home through September 2020, and Ford Authority learned production ended on October 30. It's a shame, because the Continental stood proud as Lincoln's best effort in the luxury sedan segment in decades. It was built on a Ford platform, but it didn't exude an overpowering whiff of Blue Ovalness. Upmarket variants benefited from 30-way adjustable front seats, all-wheel drive and a 3.0-liter V6 twin-turbocharged to 400 horsepower and 400 pound-feet of torque. Lincoln even built a handful of Coach Door Edition models with a longer wheelbase and suicide rear doors reminiscent of the fourth-generation Continental released for 1961. These were stunningly expensive at $115,470 plus destination, yet they were all spoken for in record time. Lincoln hasn't announced plans to replace the Continental; the odds of seeing an 11th-generation model in the near future are extremely low. Nothing suggests another flagship sedan is in the works, either. Like its parent company, the brand is pivoting away from sedans and towards crossovers and SUVs, which sell in far greater numbers and tend to be more profitable. Sending the Continental to the pantheon of automotive history leaves the Navigator as the Lincoln brand's sole flagship, though an electric model might slot above it in the 2020s. America's take on the luxury sedan isn't dead, however. Arch rival Cadillac recently replaced the ATS and the CTS with a pair of sedans named CT4 and CT5, respectively. Both will spawn high-performance variants in 2021. Related Video: