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Pickups pack in luxury, utility

Ford adds its entry to a crop of gussied-up haulers that are eclipsing SUVs.

By TOM ZUCCO
Published February 27, 2005

	[Times photo: Scott Keeler]
	Mark Cabon, a salesman for Autoway Lincoln Mercury of Clearwater, ties balloons onto a 2006 Lincoln Mark LT pickup at the dealership on Thursday.

CLEARWATER - Somewhere, Steve McQueen is scratching his head.

The humble American pickup, like the dusty and dinged '56 Chevrolet that McQueen drove in the 1972 movie The Getaway, has morphed into something brawnier and with more bling than anything that's come before it.

This month Ford is introducing the latest entrant in the ultra-luxury pickup derby - the Lincoln Mark LT, a 300-horsepower, 5,600-pound vehicle with chrome-plated wheels designed to enter an arena already occupied by the Cadillac Escalade EXT, the Hummer H2 SUT and to a lesser extent, the GMC Denali and Dodge Ram.

Like the Escalade and Hummer, the main draw for the Mark LT is amenities such as wood accents and leather seats. The LT's starting price is about $40,000, compared with about $53,000 for the Escalade and Hummer.

The 2006 Mark LT will be available next month, and Ford plans to produce about 20,000.

Part of the reason automakers are focusing on uber pickups, say auto industry analysts, is a declining interest in many large sport utility vehicles. Despite carrying more than $4,000 in rebates, the typical full-size SUV now takes more than three months to sell, up from a little more than a month in 2002.

But rising fuel prices aside, full-size pickup sales accounted for roughly 2.5-million of the 17-million vehicles sold in the United States in 2004, marking the highest level in a decade for full-size pickups. The jump was due in part to Ford's revamped F-Series lineup and Nissan Motor Co.'s first full-size offering, the Titan.

Ford's first attempt at a luxury pickup, the Lincoln Blackwood, was produced in 2002 and 2003. It didn't have a usable bed, came in only one color (black) and never found widespread acceptance.

But for the past 18 years, Ford's F-150 pickup has been the top-selling vehicle in America. So using the F-150 frame, the automaker tried again.

"We'll order as many Mark LTs as we can get," said Morgan Scarritt, vice president and general manager of Scarritt Lincoln-Mercury in Seminole.

The buyers Ford and the other automakers are looking for are people who want pickups that are more like SUVs, and who want to use the same vehicle to move furniture in the morning and go to an upscale restaurant at night.

People like Jan Govan, a Clearwater attorney who had read about the Mark LT, parked his leased PT Cruiser in the lot at AutoWay Lincoln Mercury Thursday, and took a tour of a demonstration model.

"It's a nice combination of luxury and function," Govan said. "I can take it to depositions and put my sons' dirt bikes in the back.

"It'll still accommodate my recreational needs and provide a greater element of luxury."

Even if it means paying more at the pump.

The average pickup has become 40 percent heavier in the past 20 years and 11 percent less fuel-efficient, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. The Mark LT gets about 14 miles per gallon in the city, 18 on the highway.

But even if the bigger, newer trucks got twice the gas mileage, to some pickup purists, there is a certain romance to the older trucks that is unmatched.

Bill Seitz, a commercial photographer, travels extensively with his wife in the Southwest. "Nothing rusts out there," Seitz said from his home in New Preston, Conn. "So you see a lot of old pickups and I really fell in love with them."

The result was Pickups: Classic American Trucks, a coffee table book filled with photos of old pickups (Random House, $39.95).

"My whole thing with old trucks is styling," Seitz said. "The old trucks made you kind of smile when you looked at them. The new ones are getting to be more about testosterone."

Seitz, 52, drives an 8-year-old Dodge Dakota pickup. But it's his shiny '52 Chevrolet pickup he cherishes most.

"The luxury trucks scream money," he said. "Are you going to put dirt in it? No. Are you going to put manure in it for your garden? No. I don't think you'll see contractors driving them, unless it's the guy who owns the company.

"It seems to me these are trucks that go to South Hampton or Palm Beach or Naples."

That doesn't mean pickup trucks that carry the Cadillac, Lincoln and Hummer names are bad, Seitz said.

"They're just a response to people wanting luxury vehicles."

[Last modified February 27, 2005, 00:11:08]