After eliminating Mercury from their inventory now Ford Motor Co. is going to cut 500 dealerships and evaluate 700 more. I always thought the idea of sales was to make your product available to the public. Ford sold 230,000 Lincolns in 1990 and 82,000 in 2009. This is going to be a ship that is going to be hard to turn around. On the other hand Lexus has only 230 dealers and sell twice as many vehicles as Lincoln. Hello it’s a Lexus Ford you cannot compete with them by closing dealerships. I assume most of these are underperforming spots that probably need to update their facilities and what a better way to force them to improve there dealerships then to threaten to close. Many of these cannot afford to update and so will close at the loss of jobs and the trickle down here is huge as many additional jobs will also be lost. “We’re fully committed to transforming Lincoln into a world-class luxury brand with compelling vehicles and also a consumer experience to match,” Ford’s Americas President Mark Fields said. I just don’t see how they can compete at this level with the BMW, Lexus and I think Cadillac needs to be included as a serious luxury vehicle. Also many luxury car buyers will be taking a serious look at some of the green vehicles coming out in the next year.