The Lincoln Zephyr brings back another iconic Ford name

There’s a heck of a lot of sense in recycling old car names. It saves the long and tricky trademarking process and neatly avoids calling your car the Mitsubishi Prostitute.

So it ought to have been little surprise that the Ford Puma morphed from a dinky, lithe coupe to a slightly podgy (though admittedly ace) crossover following a gap in time long enough for most people not to notice.

And now the Ford Zephyr is back. Well, kinda. This is the Lincoln Zephyr, FoMoCo’s posh offshoot borrowing an old name for the Chinese market. A market where the Ford Escort still exists, we might add.

The new-age Zephyr ought to be less contentious than the Puma, too, for it’s a pair of blue oval badges short of being a pretty faithful tribute to its Fifties and Sixties namesake (pictured below) – it’s a premium-ish saloon car, basically.

We’ve been drip-fed numerous details on the Zephyr. It’ll hook a 2.0-litre petrol engine up to an eight-speed automatic gearbox, the interior will concoct ‘four relaxing modes’ from digital scents and 128-colour ambient lighting (who knew there were 128 colours?) while we’re told the exterior “inherits the brand’s Quiet Flight DNA centred on the tenets of Beauty, Gliding, Human and Sanctuary, while also expressing a strong, contemporary aesthetic that signals the future face of Lincoln design".

Nope, us neither. And the marketing speak does not conclude there. “Another unique feature in the Lincoln Zephyr is The Future Letter,” we’re told. “After customising content on the full-width coast-to-coast screen, customers can schedule content to appear on screen at designated moments and add a sense of joy for passengers.”

What’d give us a sense of joy is if – like the original Zephyr – this one sees a convertible and Monte Carlo rally winner spun from it. We’ll keep our fingers firmly but pointlessly crossed…