Lincoln Mark LT: ???

[jmowreader]

The Lincoln Mark LT is a Ford F-150 four-door pickup dolled up with all the amenities you'd expect to find on a Lincoln. It starts at $38,680...which, as it turns out, is what pickups of this trim level cost. (The GMC Sierra Denali, GM's equivalent truck, is more expensive.)

And yes, people are buying these; the one I saw was sitting in front of me at an intersection.

We normally call vehicles like this penis extensions, but in this case we need to come up with an equivalent term for women. Because I really think women are the driving elements in the purchase of pickups with leather seats. No guy would ever choose to drop forty grand on a half-ton pickup; you can buy an F-250 (a 3/4-ton truck) with a diesel and have fantasies of being a gearjammer on the open road for about the same coin, or buy an F-350 duallie (1-ton truck) with a gas engine for slightly less. And these are definitely NOT intended for contractors: for them, a truck is a business decision and forty bills for a half-ton truck with a six-foot bed makes no fiscal sense.

This is what I think happens: a family decides to buy a new vehicle. Mama wants another SUV so she can "ride up high in style" and "the children will be safe." (Yes, both of these justifications are bullshit and if mama really wanted the children to be safe she'd buy an Accord or a Camry, but that's beside the point.) Papa wants a pickup because he's tired of paying his buddies in beer to take him to the garden store to buy cow manure--because Mama ain't gonna have bags of dirt in the back of HER SUV. But pickups have no style, so forget it. All of a sudden here's this Lincoln. Luxury car on the inside, six-foot bed in back, everyone's happy.

[Orsino]

1. How appropriate that it should be used...

...to haul a load of manure.