Ford/Lincoln/Mercury Door Keypads
Years ago, Fords, Lincolns, and the occasional Mercury had a set of five little buttons, each bearing a pair of numbers, placed near the door handles.
Those sets of keys were first introduced as an option for the Lincoln Continental, Mark IV, and Ford Thunderbird for the 1980 model year. They were initially called the “Keyless Entry System,” but as radio-operated remote-unlocking key fobs became more and more common, a new official name was registered for them in 2009: Securicode.
At its simplest, Securicode is just a combination lock for a car. Really, that’s pretty much it! Here’s how it was described (back when it was still the Keyless Entry System) on its introduction in 1980, from a Lincoln press release:
“The Keyless Entry System permits door locking, door unlocking and decklid release from outside the driver’s door without a key. The complete system consists of a row of five push buttons on the driver’s-door belt molding that are connected to a minicomputer.
The push buttons are back-lit for nighttime use and are similar to those used on small calculators. To unlock the driver’s door, one simply pushes the buttons in a pre-programmed five-digit sequence. By pressing specific buttons, the driver also can unlock the rest of the doors, lock all the doors or release the decklid.”
