Modern pickup trucks are brimming with luxury features and cutting-edge technology, but not long ago they were almost exclusively designed and bought as workhorses. Trucks gradually started becoming more commonly used as family vehicles toward the end of the 20th century, but once Ford introduced the F-150 SuperCrew in the year 2001 that prioritized interior space and comfort over bed length and blue-collar work, there was no looking back. Building off the success of its groundbreaking full-sized luxury SUV, the Navigator, Ford’s white-collar cousin Lincoln had the idea to take that recipe and apply it to the successful passenger-focused F-150 SuperCrew. Thus, the Lincoln Blackwood was born, and immediately flopped so hard it was cancelled within a year. The Blackwood may have shared its platform with the F-150, but Lincoln changed more than you may know.
It was very different from an F-150
Lincoln added air springs to the F-150’s solid rear axle and swapped out Ford’s SOHC 5.4-liter Triton V8 for Lincoln’s DOHC 5.4-liter InTech V8. The Blackwood’s cargo bed was made of plastic, and its tailgate was split 50/50 and opened out like barn doors, though Lincoln called them Dutch doors. The Blackwood’s cargo bed was further separated from the lowly F-150’s by being styled to mimic African black wenge wood with aluminum-strake inlays, which kind of made it a woodie. Between the questionable-looking “wood” panels, the Blackwood had a watertight, carpet-lined, LED-illuminated cargo area with stainless-steel side trim that could hold 27 cubic feet of stuff. Its truck capabilities were hampered by a permanently mounted, power-operated tonneau cover that was controlled by switches above the rearview mirror, by a switch in the driver’s door, or a button on the key fob.
The interior was a place of innovation too, with four Connoly leather-covered bucket seats in place of the usual cloth or vinyl benches in F-150s. The front seats had climate control systems that sent hot or cold air through the perforations in the leather, and the only available option was a GPS navigation system.
The Blackwood cost about $53,000 in 2002, which, accounting for inflation, would be around $95,000 in 2025. The highest-end trucks can exceed that cost now, but there was no precedent back then, and Blackwoods sat like on Lincoln dealer lots like that unsightly blackhead that you can’t get rid of. It was cancelled after its single 2002 model year, though it allegedly took some dealers closer to two years to sell their inventory. Watch this Motorweek review of the Blackwood to hear how optimistic the world was about this luxo-truck.
