Ford has been busy shuffling around its design team for some time now, closing studios and consolidating those facilities, all while moving folks into different roles. In fact, the company will close its Irvine Design Studio in California this November, moving the staff there to the company’s Dearborn, Michigan based headquarters. Back in February, FoMoCo also announced that Lincoln Design Director Kemal Curic would be transitioning to the role of global design director for Ford Performance. Now, Lincoln has gained a new exterior design chief, too.
That person is Senon Franco, who will lead a team of designers with the goal of driving innovation and elevating Lincoln’s exterior design language moving forward. Franco actually joined Lincoln in June, bringing with him 20 years of experience from a variety of automotive brands, during which he led some high-profile design projects. Those include the Hyundai Santa Cruz, which Franco designed, as well as the exterior of the Hyundai Nexo.
Additionally, Franco played a key role in developing the current design DNA for the luxurious Genesis brand. Prior to that, he worked for EV upstart Canoo, helping to develop concepts for that company. Franco has garnered considerable experience designing both concepts and production-ready vehicles over the years, which sets him up nicely to do precisely the same thing at Lincoln. Additionally, he is a graduate from the Art Center College of Design, with a major in Transportation Design in 2003, and for the last 10 years, has also been serving as an Art Center instructor.
At Lincoln, Franco will join Curic’s replacement, Christine Cheng. She has roughly two decades of design experience herself, but just joined Ford back in early 2023 following time at its cross-town rival General Motors and Cadillac. Cheng previously helped develop the F-Series lineup, and has now shifted her focus back to the luxury side of the business.
For a longer-range variant(s).
Ford has more than one new hi-po pony car coming.
Another way to potentially help identify quality issues.
A very nice example of the discontinued hatch.
It's ditching the V6 entirely, at least, for retail customers.
Generally speaking, the charging experience is improving, too.
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The Santa Cruz has proved to be a sales flop after the first 2 years of production. Everyone who thought they looked good bought them and now the dealer lots are full of them. Ford through July sold 98,078 Mavericks and Santa Cruz only 16,532 units. I hope this guy does a better job at Lincoln than he did at Hyundai.
You stated what thousands are thinking! Genesis stands out, but it's front end looks bloated and tired already. The fact that they copied Porsche on the overall shape didn't take alot either.
Lincoln needs to bring back the Continental, but do it right this time and place it higher than the mass market brands and compete with Rolls Royce.
They won't sell and it would be cancelled in no time. They need to produce volume and not have a factory that takes 6 months to make a Rolls Royce highline type of automobile.
Produce volume with LS, Continental and mark 9 with v-8 and S650 platform.