2009 Detroit Auto Show: Lincoln C Concept

What is it?
Lincoln C Concept

What's special about it?
No matter what you might think after looking at the photos, the "C" in the name Lincoln C does not under any circumstances stand for "Citroën."

This despite this concept for the 2009 Detroit Auto Show that features a DS-style single-spoke steering wheel. And what about the seats etched with a floral pattern? Isn't that just like the Citroën C-Cactus concept from last year? Well, yes. And that bustleback, with the vertical backlight mounted above an apple bottom, looks conspicuously like a last-generation Renault Mégane, no? Oui. (Yes, we know that the Mégane is not a Citroën, but it is French and that's kind of the same thing.)

No, says designer Freeman Thomas. The "C" stands for the C-segment of cars, of which the Ford Focus is one. Not coincidentally, this concept is based loosely off of a Focus platform. And, anyway, Thomas says that Lincolns from 1939, 1956 and 1961 inspired the C, all built in a time before France was discovered. J Mays butted in to say that the C was also inspired by endurance-racing go-karts.

Stranger than the concept of a go-kart-inspired hatchback, is that the French-lookin' Lincoln concept with floral seats presages a production car you can expect to see in the coming years based on the new Ford Focus platform. Yes, from Lincoln. If you think of it as Lincoln's version of the Volvo C30, you wouldn't be far from on target.

Wanna go one step weirder? Derrick Kuzak, head technical brainiac at Ford, says the suicide doors are for real. The suicides are as tired an auto-show trope as the old floatin' seats trick or the side mirrors replaced by rearward-facing cameras. But Kuzak says a lot of engineering work has already gone into the design. And he's not talking about lame little demi-doors as on old Saturns; we asked.

The other aspect of the C that's quite real is the 178-horsepower 1.6-liter turbocharged direct-injection inline-4 engine. When mated with a six-speed dual-clutch gearbox Ford calls PowerShift, the engine delivers 43 mpg on the highway in the C, at least in theory. According to Ford, that's a 25 percent improvement compared to the Focus with its 2.0-liter engine. The engine also incorporates what Ford calls Assisted Direct Start, which shuts down the engine at stops and automatically restarts the engine when the driver takes his foot off the brake, as in some hybrid vehicles. Lincoln says the C weighs 2,750 pounds.

The front and rear bench seats (yes, bench seats) can accommodate six people in a vehicle that's the length of a Focus but has the width of a Lincoln MKZ. It might be able to carry six people in its airy white cabin (which is, according to Ford, larger than the interior of the 1961 Continental), but their stuff is going to have to go in a separate vehicle. Incidentally, Ford says that though the seats are thin, your rump sinks far enough into them to prevent you sliding across the bench and into the opposite door panel in a turn.

The C also serves as a platform for Ford to show a Sync concept. The voice-activated communications and entertainment system gets all sorts of new functionality. That includes the ability for the system to talk back to you in the form of a pale, disembodied woman's head floating on a screen. This is horrifying and I'm going to have nightmares for some time to come. Thanks, Ford. (For details on the Sync interface concept go here.)

Cute car, though.

Inside Line says: Not cute enough for you? How about this: Ford imagines that if this car was real and it saw another of its kind on the road, it would "wink" by briefly dimming its driver-side headlight. We couldn't make this stuff up. — Daniel Pund, Senior Editor, Detroit