Despite its struggles, Ford Motor Co. has had reasons to celebrate this year. Both its all-new Ford F-150 pickup trucks and a concept that may make it into production as Ford's entry in the hotly contested B car segment have been strong hits on the auto show circuit.

But it's the Lincoln brand that has been getting the buzz -- this time through the swank, sexy MKT concept. This is the second year in a row that a Lincoln has been an attention getter, with the MKR four-door sedan/coupe drawing plenty of looks in 2007. Even better, Lincoln sales were up 9.1 percent last year, buoyed by the popular MKZ sedan and MKX luxury crossover.

Peter Horbury, Ford's director of design for the Americas, recently talked to the Post-Gazette about Lincoln and Ford.

Question: Many of the journalists I've talked to said that Ford's had a pretty dramatic about-face when it comes to styling and design. What's happened at Ford that has resulted in so many stylistically interesting products?

Answer: It takes about three to four years for a design direction to change, and the strengthening of our design teams on both sides of the Atlantic is starting to show through.

Another positive for us is that Derrick Kuzak became head of product development and then global product development. When the head of product development puts a priority on design, as Derrick does, you start to see a lot of good designs coming through and not being watered down by feasibility and cost issues. He's given us all the chance we could wish for to do our job and get on with it.

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Q: Lincolns have been hits for the last few auto show cycles. What's going on with that brand and rebirth?

A: It started out with two good products, the Lincoln MKZ sedan and the Lincoln MKX crossover, which brought a whole new batch of customers into Lincoln dealerships who hadn't been there before. These were the two cars that stopped the sales slide and started to turn things around.

As of now, we have had 14 consecutive months of sales growth at Lincoln. So once we established that the Lincoln brand was alive and kicking, we put together this Lincoln design vision for the future.

This is how you really strengthen a brand -- you establish the DNA for the brand first, and not just work from sketches on a wall. You sit down as a team and work on what a Lincoln looks like to American customers. What is its history and heritage? What were the high points in all those years at Lincoln?

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Q: And what did you learn from all of that?

A: Luxury in America is becoming less brash, less ostentatious. And if you look at the really good years for Lincoln in the 1940s through 1960s we saw that was exactly what Lincoln was back them. It was an antidote to that other American luxury brand (Cadillac). Lincoln did not depend on dazzle and chrome and nozzles and fins. Lincoln instead relied on simple, timeless luxury. And that fits at a time when luxury consumers are doing things more discreetly and not shouting about their wealth.

So what we did was use those design cues from earlier Lincolns and expressed all that in a modern way.

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Q: That brings us to the latest expression of all that, the MKT concept, which is turning a lot of heads.

A: The MKT shows how we can now take our cues and heritage and move them onto different types of vehicles. Because we did our homework and got our Lincoln design philosophy right, that all shows in the MKT. It shows that the new Lincoln look is very firmly established in the history and heritage of Lincoln -- but done in a modern way.

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Q: Will you build it as a production car?

A: (Laughing) I can't discuss that. But for the most part, the concept cars we do nowadays, they either point to where we are going or they are serious ideas we have. But we do look for the reaction of the press and public to these concept events.

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Q: I said in one of my articles that what I liked about your newest concept, the MKT, is that it had coherence and that it had a strong family identity to the Lincoln brand. What's your view of the role of coherence and identity as part of a brand family?

A: There's a limit to that, Don. I truly believe that good DNA and family identity is important. But not every member of the family is a twin or triplet. We have to be open enough to have some variety in the family so that they don't all become clones of each other. Every member of the family has its own character, but you can still tell who the parents are.

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Q: What were some of the more debated aspects of the MKT?

A: The little bustleback on it was somewhat controversial, but it was a signature feature that gave it a high-quality look, something like the Rolls Royces, Daimlers and Lincolns of the past.

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Q: What was the team's inspiration for the MKT?

A: It was the Lear jet -- the ultimate in private luxury. We wanted the MKT to be the Lear Jet of the road. That was the code for the whole program in the studio. The MKT is meant to offer extreme luxury, along with a functionality of luggage space in the rear hatch.

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Q: Tell me a bit about the Ford Verve concepts.

A: The Verve is intended to very much indicate around the world where small cars from Ford are heading. The two (a hatchback and a four-door sedan) are quite similar in design, and we will do one car with somewhat different versions around the world.

While the sedan is really our American entry, we decided to show the hatchback here also to gauge opinion. The preconceived wisdom is that American drivers would not drive a hatchback, but that all happened some time ago. These days, younger buyers will be happy to drive something as dynamically sporty looking as the Verve hatchback.

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Q: And I understand Ford is trying to emphasize the changing view of small cars -- that they are not inexpensive, "cheap" cars anymore.

A: For many years in this country, small meant cheap -- the entry-level and most inexpensive car in the model range. But for more people these days, they want a small car that happens to have all the features of larger ones in a smaller package. Young people especially know that lighter, smaller phones and musical players for instance, as well as smaller digital cameras, all cost more. And they are used to paying a bit more for all the features in a small package. What changed things for small cars in this country was the popularity of the Mini Cooper. You can spend an awful lot of money optioning out a Mini. But more people want a car like that these days.

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Q: So you have successful Ford and Lincoln concepts. What about Mercury? Can the same philosophies and ideas be applied to that car?

A: Mercury will remain a Ford with extras, a new front end and new tail end, and different materials used inside and out. That approach seems to work very well. For instance, a Mercury Mariner, for all its similarities to the Ford Escape, appeals to a completely different kind of customer. We've learned from our Mercury Mariner buyers that a Mariner customer is a Mariner customer, and he or she would not dream of buying a Ford Escape.

So future Mercuries will have enough differences to make it a distinct brand, but based on Fords. But Lincolns are and will continue to be quite different.