Lincoln Cross

A seriously underestimated star

For readers in the US, this logo of the Lincoln Motor Company will be easily recognised.

Lincoln cars have been sold in the US for over 100 years, and can now also be bought from showrooms in Canada, Mexico, the Middle East, Republic of Korea, and China. In fact there are more Lincolns sold in China than in the US.

Notably absent from that list is England, which coined the name "Lincoln" for a cathedral city in the Middle Ages.

Also not seen much in the rest of Europe, where drivers are quite happy with their own brands of luxury cars: Rolls Royce, Bentley, Aston Martin, Porsche, Bugatti, Ferrari, Jaguar, Lamborghini, Maserati, and so on. No need for a common Lincoln!

And if you want to talk about tough vehicles, remember World War One, when the British built a new mobile weapon "Land Cruising Caterpillar Machine Gun Destroyer". To keep the project secret, the weapon was given the innocuos-sounding code name "Water Carrier", which was later shortened to "tank".

The world's very first tanks were constructed at William Foster & Co. in Lincoln, England.

But we digress. Back to the logo.

Apparently the logo is supposed to represent a star, rather a cross. But since stars are gigantic spherical balls of plasma and never cross-shaped, we'll use the term "cross" on this page.

And for good reason. The older Lincoln logos were indeed based on a cross which matched the flag of the city of Lincoln, England; a red St George's Cross with a central fleur-de-lis; historically a Roman Catholic emblem.

In 1964, the company felt it time to do away with the 14th century crest and just stylised its cross.

1939-1954	1954-1964	1964-1972	1972-2012	Lincoln-Mercury 1983-1989
Click any image to enlarge				Lincoln City flag