Have you ever driven an LS? It's on a completely different level and anything ford has ever made. They still are not caught up

 

I actually thought they were pretty good looking cars

 

I was a passenger in one in early 2000s, it wasn't too bad.

 

At the time, CR said it was the best American-badged sedan they had ever tested.

 

Ah got it, so no. American badged means can't hold up to the real flagships, the big 3(4 in the past when Lexus was still in the game) have no rivals for a reason.

Och, I thought you owned an LS for a while?

 

Yes, 94 LS400. I thought you were asking if I ever drove the Lincoln LS.

 

CR never said that...at least in literal words. What CR said was that it was the best American car they had tested. It is up to one's interpretation to decide if CR, by that remark, meant that the non-American flagships were superior or not. We do know that CR has often thought that the Mercedes S-class was at or near the top of sedan-rankings....at least until the Lexus LS400 came along in 1990.

I would also point out that the Lincoln LS was not, and was not meant to be, a flagship per se.....just as its Jaguar cousin, the S-Type, ranked below the XJ in the line-up.

 

That Jag gearshift should disqualify it alone.

 

At the time, that was a pretty low bar.

 

But, at that time, there were also a lot more sedans competing for it. Most of the sedan market, today, has been taken over by crossovers and car-based-SUVs. Look at Lincoln itself, for instance. Like Buick, it has gone to an all-SUV market in the U.S., although Buick admittedly doesn't have anything to directly compete with the Navigator.......one must look at the GMC Yukon/Cadillac Escalade for that.

 

Among American manufacturers, not really. The only other American luxury sedans at the time was were the Lincoln Town Car, and 2 or 3 Cadillac sedans.

 

First, that wasn't quite what I was getting at. I wasn't refering simply to luxury models alone, but the sheer number of sedans that were then in production and available for CR tests. Second, the New Yorker, the Chrysler flagship, was still in production, so one could not limit the number of "luxury" sedans simply to GM and Ford.

 

That makes no sense. CR can test any vehicle no matter how many of them they make. And the New Yorker ceased production years before the LS was even made. The Chrysler sedans of the time like the 300M were not luxury vehicles and never advertised as Lincoln or Cadillac competitors.

 

Most of what I said did make sense. I was simply not using it in the context that you were talking about.

All the more reason why, to get a best-American sedan-ranking of the LS from CR when it first debuted, was a rather remarkable achievement.


Yes, I'll note that, but that alone did not impact CR's view of the LS.


The New Yorker, when it was in production, was the clear Chrysler flagship, except for the earlier limited-run Imperial. It was dropped in 1996.

The larger RWD/AWD 300 was probably more of a luxury sedan than the smaller FWD 300M which preceded it. It definitely had better ride-comfort and was more suitable as a luxo-cruiser.

 

I owned a 2006 Lincoln LS V8, I put 260k miles and it was still going strong 2 years later after I sold it. The Jag pic you put is nowhere near the interior Quality or year of the LS or the Sister car Jag there was. No wonder you are confused

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