The Ford Motor Company is currently the second largest carmaker on Earth. "
FoMoCo" (one of its nicknames) includes the Ford, Mercury, Lincoln, Volvo, Jaguar, Land Rover and Aston Martin brands, which cover massive parts of the car market in the US and abroad. It is widely believed that
Ford's American brands, namely Ford, Mercury and Lincoln, are suffering due to the added responsibilities of the new additions to the Ford family, as well as controversies harming important models, like the older version of the
Ford Explorer SUV and Ford Focus compact. Ford is criticized especially for its handling of the historical and
ailing Lincoln brand, which is no longer a top-tier luxury brand while its rival Cadillac is supported more heavily by General Motors, along with the increasingly irrelevant Mercury brand, which sells the most obvious twins of
Ford models besides Lincoln.
Ford completed the expulsion of
the Lincoln brand from its
Premier Automotive Group.