Being a writer in this glorious modern age is fascinating. On one hand, it means every little mistake you make is immediately found and people all over the world get to call you a moron in real time. On the other, it means that your readers can get directly involved, which I love. That’s why today’s Meh Car comes from a reader named Preston who suggests not just any Meh Car, but his own Meh Car: a Lincoln MKT. Yeah, I forgot that was a thing, too.
Here’s how Preston pitched the MKT:
I have an idea bout a Meh car, my car. My car is a Lincoln MKT. Don’t know what it is? Well it’s the Lincoln version of a Ford Flex. Wait you don’t know what one of those are? I’m not surprised. It is basically the successor to the Freestyle. I am not writing this because I hate my car because I don’t. In fact I really like my car but it seems I am one of the few considering it hasn’t really been updated since 2013. Anyway, I figured Id write this to say, it’s a great car in reality but it’s a car that when people see it they go, “What the FUCK is that ugly thing!”. I figure that it fits a Meh car since it does its job but people see it and forget it. Plus it is also a weird CUV wagon. I dare you to find a commercial for one. I certainly have not seen one. I bet they did but it has not been aired for at least 5 years. So that is my car for Meh Car Monday, literally my own car.
Preston makes a pretty good case, and it’s very strongly backed up by the fact that my brain seems incapable of recalling the last time I saw one of these, or if I’ve even seen one at all, or if they even exist outside of Preston’s fevered mind.
I checked and, holy crap, you can buy one of these new! I mean, you won’t, because hardly anyone does—only 131 were sold in the whole United States last month, due to an ever-increasing trend of Nobody Gives A Shit About This Car that analysts have been tracking.
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The MKT is built on the same platform as the Ford Explorer and the Ford Flex, which just makes the mehgnamity of the MKT more infuriating, because I think the Flex is the most interestingly-styled car in the entire Ford lineup. There’s no deep-seated reason the MKT has to be so meh; it just is.
I don’t even think it’s all that ugly, like our owner/meh-car-outer Preston does. It looks like a modern Lincoln, but not a specific modern Lincoln, it just sort of looks like the general idea of modern Lincoln, even though it actually is one specific car itself. But it doesn’t feel like a specific car model, it feels like a sketchy police-artist rendering as described by someone who was flung by a Lincoln showroom at 75 MPH.
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Like so many meh cars, the specs of the car are basically just fine. You can get it with front-wheel drive or all-wheel drive, you can get engines ranging from a fleet-sales 2-liter four to a quite good 365 horsepower 3.5-liter V6. You can only get it with the six-speed auto, and a special system that sucks all the interest out of the driving experience and converts it to tepid warmth that’s then pumped into the seat heaters.
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The only version of this thing that’s remotely interesting is the hearse variant, and that’s really saying something when the best way to enjoy a particular car is to be dead. I mean really dead, not just the usual meh car dead inside sort of feeling.
Preston, our MKT owner, dared me to find a commercial for one, and while I completely understand his confidence—I sure as hell didn’t remember any commercials for this thing—it looks like Lincoln made some after all:
I’ve always really liked the Church song Under the Milky Way Tonight, though this cover version is sort of grating, and this ad could really be for almost any car or moving object at all. The car whizzes by in the black, empty void, the camera swoops in and out, and we’re done.
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I bet the ad agency made this with placeholder cars and just sold them to anyone. I bet Proton or Perouda have the same damn ad running on Malaysian television.
Also, that tagline, Reach Higher, is one that’s so generic it could work for a middle school’s attempt to no longer be in the bottom 1/3rd of the state on standardized tests, or it could be the tagline of a dating service targeted at wealthy tall people. It’s completely generic.
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I thought there might be another commercial available, but, no, if you want Lincoln MKwhatever ads, you can have Xs and Cs and even Zs, but this moody slice of dark nothing is it for the MKT.
I’m sure there’s many people who have MKTs and think they’re just fine. I’m sure there’s many people who have MKTs but have been calling them MKCs or MKXs for years and also think they’re just fine. But I still can’t imagine an actual human being who actively wants a Lincoln MKT.
If they did, what, exactly, would they be wanting? The experience of being in a sensory depravation tank? A freedom from the exhausting draw of the material world? The sweet embrace of nothingness?
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I hope I never find out.
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