Lincoln Custom Dash Kits

Lincoln Dash Kits: Adding Value to Style

Custom Lincoln dash kits are an easy and affordable way to add personal style and elegance to the interior of your vehicle. Whether you choose genuine carbon fiber custom dash kits for your MKZ, a premium kit in brushed aluminum for your MKT or a dash trim for your Navigator in exciting sticker bomb or Digital Camo, you know that you'll not only be adding to the perceived value of your Lincoln but you'll also be adding a touch of personal style to it as well. So, if you find that your tastes tend to be more European in terms of woodgrain trim why not pick up a Continental wood dash kit in satin burlwood? And, if you find your Lincoln is lacking we've also got the high-gloss wood finishes we Americans know and love. Whatever you decide, trust Rvinyl to bring you the best in terms of quality, selection and price.

Lincoln: The Sound of a Comeback

Lincoln has long been known as your grandfather's car but, in recent years, Lincoln Motor Company has been doing all it can to change that perception and win a share of the Millennial demographic. Key to orchestrating this turnaround is a completely revamped design of the line from the inside out. Key to this transformation has been LMC's chief interior designer So Kang.

Classically trained as a harpist, Kang was offered a job by Ford Motor Company in 1987 right out of design school but she is about as far from a gearhead as could be and, as a result, she is able to bring a fresh perspective to all of her design choices. In fact, according to Kang, her design inspirations aren't taken from VW, BMW or Fiat but straight from contemporary culture. As such, one of the key elements in Lincoln's design language is a focus on simplicity. In essence, a radical de-cluttering of the interior space of Lincoln vehicles has been one of the prime objective of her design vision, prizing functionality over baroque busy-ness in terms of LMC's interior visual aesthetic. She states "There is too much noise in design," so she designed a more compact dashboard in tandem with a concave glove box.

Bigger Is Not Always Better

By reducing the clutter on the dash board and instrument panels many would assume that there would be a loss of functionality but Kang is at pains to show that this is not the case. In fact, by focusing the driver's eyes and senses on cleverly designed interior features such as an iPad-inspired center console display that allows one to engage the vehicle's controls by means of a touch-screen, the experience of being in a Lincoln becomes all the more engaging and vibrant as it activates all of one's senses simultaneously.  In pursuit of streamlining the cockpit of Lincoln vehicles, she even removed the familiar shifter knob in favor of a cluster of push-buttons labeled PRNDL for gear shifting located on the driver's side of the central display screen.

The jury is still out on the MKZ's push-button shifter and even the chief designer admits it was a hard sell. She states: "When I was doing the MKZ, I freed up the console area so you can have really good storage with a more flowing instrument panel. That was my sales pitch." Only time will tell if removing one of the most loved interior components of true driving enthusiasts (the shifter), will prove to have been the right choice or a serious misstep.

Designing with a Global Market in Mind

One of the challenges for any designer of an international auto maker is to understand how the point of purchase translates into different design decisions with regard to interior design and dash trim. According to Amko Leenarts, Director of Interior Design for Ford Motor Company (the parent of Lincoln) people in different countries have different expectations with regard to the materials used in their vehicles. One example he gives is that in the US market "we have more difficulties to have the American customer accept wood without any lacquer, they want the wood trim really shiny. While in Europe [dull wood without lacquer] is considered as a more high-end solution." Designing while taking such choices into consideration makes the process infinitely more difficult but leaves the door open to aftermarket dash trim customization.

Another consideration any designer needs to make is what types of customers are going to be buying your product. Leenart admits that not every customer out there is going to be interested in a luxury vehicle but what he does firmly believe is that, regardless of your sale price, your end result has to look like it costs more than it does. In short, he says, that when you drop "$15,000 on the car, you want it to look like it's... a $20,000 car." Clearly the man knows what he's talking about and at Rvinyl it is one of the central tenets of our Lincoln custom dash kit design philosophy.