Lincoln Motor Company
The Lincoln Motor Company was founded in August 1917 by Henry Leland and his son Wilfred. Among the founders of Cadillac, Leland had sold the company to General Motors in 1909, remaining on as an executive until 1917, when he left over a dispute with GM President William Durant. Naming Lincoln Motor Company after Abraham Lincoln, the first President for whom he ever voted (1864), Leland financed the company by securing a $10 million contract to build Liberty V12 aircraft engines, breaking ground on the Lincoln Motor Company Plant. To build the Liberty engines, Lincoln sourced parts from other manufacturers; along with cylinders produced by Ford, other parts were sourced from Buick, Cadillac, Marmon, and Packard. In total, 6,500 Liberty V12 engines were produced by Lincoln before the end of World War I ceased wartime production.
Lincoln Savings and Loan Association
Lincoln then became headed by Charles Keating, who as chairman of a housing construction company, American Continental Corporation, purchased Lincoln in February 1984 for $51 million. Keating fired the existing management. Over the next four years, Lincoln's assets increased from $1.1 billion to $5.5 billion.
Such savings and loan associations had been deregulated in the early 1980s, allowing them to make highly risky investments with their depositors' money, a change of which Keating took advantage.