2013 Lincoln MKT Town Car Fleet

Regardless of how odd it may look to have a bulky crossover SUV, like the MKT, replacing the equally bulky, yet outdated, Town Car sedan in Lincoln’s lineup, you can’t resist saying that it just might work. It’s equally luxurious as the Town Car and far larger, allowing passengers to stretch out a little more. One complaint about the Town Car that has somewhat carried over to the MKT is the cost to fuel it.

The last Town Car got a wallet-draining 16 mpg city and 24 mpg highway and the MKT was not much better at 16 to 17 mpg city and 23 to 25 mpg highway, depending on options. Well, for fleets later on in the 2013 model year, Lincoln is addressing this concern by offering a 4-cylinder engine – that’s right, a 4-cylinder Lincoln...

This variant will not be made available directly to the public, as it will be a fleet-only model. It will boast a 2.0-liter EcoBoost engine that pumps out 235 ponies and 260 pound-feet of torque. That’s a 65-horsepower drop from the now-standard V-6 engine, but only a 15 pound-feet decrease in torque. Where the EcoBoost engine comes into play is the fact that it gets 20 mpg in the city and 28 mpg on the highway, that’s a 3 to 4 and 3 to 5 mpg increase, respectively.

It achieves these increases by not only offering two fewer cylinders to fuel, but also that it is only available in front-wheel drive. The lack of an AWD variant may seem like an issue to many non-fleet, but look at any fleet of Town Cars and you’ll find out that they are all rear-wheel drive, so that’s not a concern to fleet owners.

The Lincoln MKT Town Car Fleet is expected to debut later in 2012 and will come in at a base price of $49,845. There are no details on whether the options list is thinned out from the current MKT, but we assume it will all remain the same..