Lincoln is a good brand,
--------------------------
its still a ford.
somethign else to think about, with lincoln AND cadilac.
they are made with state of the art equipment for the time. for example, my brothers lincoln town car lost its power windows a few years back befoer he traded it in.
in ANY other ford, you would hop down to the dealer, spend 150 to 200 bucks on a new power window motor, and away you go.
in the lincoln.....however.....the entire power window system is HYDROLIC. yep, 1500 bucks for that state of the art super duper hydrolic motor that runs ALL teh windows. thats right, when it goes, not one window stops working they ALL do.
the altinator went out. no biggie. 45 bucks from ford, 29 bucks for an aftermarket rebuild and away you go.
nope. the altinator in a lincoln town car is a super duper 120 watt mega power plant spacifically designed to fit the super special mounting brackets in their state of the art show car.
300 bucks later just for the part...........
he paid 5000 bucks for it when it was 5 years old and had 55,000 miles on it. he spent well over another 3000 dollars in repairs over the next 4 years he owned it, and no one would even take it on trade at 9 years old and 120,000 miles. he sold it for about 1200 dollars with broken power windows AGAIN.
for around 9000 dollars at the time, he could ahve bought a brand new saturn, drivin it for 4 years, traded it in with 65,000 miles for about half of what he paid for it.
get the picture yet? buying used is not always the best plan economically. especially a used luxury car. their value sinks like a rock unless you buy a lexus, or german luxury sedan.
if you are going to buy used, think dependability over style. think japaneese, they have without question the best engineered cars in the world. someday, american car companies will wake up and start delivering dependability. they EXPECT you to buy a new car in less than 5 years, so make no effort to develop technology designed to outlast the factory warentee. the american mindset. maximize profit, minimize cost = ford, chevy, dodge.
the japaneese mind set, make the best manufactured product in teh world and sell it to the entire world = toyota, nissian, mitsubishi, honda.