Lincoln Mercury’s Move Left No Time for Rumors

Lincoln Mercury caught everyone by surprise last week when it announced that it is moving its corporate headquarters to Irvine from Detroit. Even industry insiders who work with Ford Motor Co. on various projects say they were in the dark.

One reason the secret kept so well is that it all happened so fast.

James Rogers, Lincoln Mercury’s general marketing manager, said last week that the announcement was made less than 24 hours after executives decided to move. The decision also came after just a few weeks of relatively high-level discussions--instead of the year or so of meetings, focus groups and study sessions it usually takes at a large company.

Rogers, Lincoln Mercury’s No. 2 manager, said the idea to come to California was a melding of Lincoln Mercury executives’ desire to separate the company from parent Ford Motor, and desires by Ford’s top corporate executives to “have an eye on the ground in California” to keep abreast of automotive trends that start here.

When the Ford people heard what the Lincoln Mercury people were talking about, Rogers said, “we very quickly came to the decision that both the corporate interests and Lincoln Mercury’s interests could be served if we moved to California.”

He said he found out that a decision had been made Wednesday afternoon. “I was sitting in my office” in Detroit when Lincoln Mercury General Manager Jim O’Connor “came in and told me to hop on a plane to California so we could announce it Thursday morning,” Rogers said.

Lost in the shuffle was the fact that, as part of the pending move, Lincoln Mercury has altered its name. The company that used to be Ford’s Lincoln-Mercury Division has dropped its hyphen and the “division” designation. It’s just Lincoln Mercury now, although dealers won’t have to change their hyphenated signs.