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How’s that for a cheerful sight? Or more like a surreal sight? William Rubano posted this at the Cohort, and it did manage to catch my attention, not surprisingly. How’d you like to be behind the wheel of that?
Cohort Sighting: 1956 Lincoln – A Pink Flamingo In Traffic (Now With Larger Picture)
– Posted on September 13, 2013
I have all kinds of love for that beauty!
Love, Love, Love that car! First, I have a real thing for the 56 Lincoln that is so unique and unlike any other Lincoln, ever. Second, I am becoming a fan of that crazy salmon color. Bright yellow Mercury Sun Valley yesterday, a salmon Lincoln today. I wonder what Mr. Rubano has in store for us tomorrow? I hope it is something in bright turquoise.
Absolutely gorgeous! Another reason I’ve always felt that ’55-’56 were the high-water mark (at the time) of automobile design . . . . . . . before everything went to hell in ’57-’60.
Gorgeous. And jpcavanaugh, I’m with you on the salmon color. I’m usually not a big fan of pink cars, they usually look cheap and tacky, but this car and this shade pull it off very well.
Long Island Railroad?
All of a sudden I feel a strange urge to visit Miami!
+++ This! Exactly!
I was 5 years old when this car came out, and I THEN recognized that so many of the more expensive Mercurys and Lincolns came in, what I called THEN: “Sunny-let’s-go-to-Florida colors”.
I think that is because one of the retired neighbors, and his wife, went to Florida every winter in a big Mercury with these colors.
Now THAT is a car. Wish we could still build them like that.
I’ll second that if it had four wheel disks, ABS and three point seat belts.
we don’t need no stinking 4 wheel disks amigo…haha
I won’t be as greedy, I can give up rear disks and abs, I like my seat belts though.
I live in British Columbia. Brakes are, ahem, rather important here!
The color suits the car wonderfully. I much prefer the 1955-56 Lincolns to their Cadillac and Imperial competition. Indeed, the ’56 was given a prestigious industrial design award. Sadly, the stylists would not leave well enough alone. For 1957 they desecrated William Schmidt’s clean, flowing design with furbelows and flash, creating one of the ugliest Lincolns ever.
+1 they certainly did spoil a beauty,having said that the 57s were not as ugly as the 58s.It would take til the Mk7 came along til I saw another Lincoln I liked.This is even more beautiful than the lilac 56 featured a few months ago.
The 1955 continued to use for one final lapse, the 1952-54 body and they didn’t got the wraparound windshield then Ford and Mercury got. However, the Cosmopolitan was replaced by the Custom and it was the final year for the Capri as the top of the line Lincoln before letting the way for the Premiere for 1956. Capri taked the place of the Cosmopolitan/Custom until 1959.
I guess the “desecratation” of William Schmidt’s design helped Imperial to take the 2nd place from Lincoln for the 1957 model year with Exner’s 2nd-gen of the “Forward look”.
I liked the 55s also,sadly after the high of 56 it was down hill style wise until the Mk 7.The CC effect nearly strikes a gain as I’ve just been listening to the Gaslight Anthem;s Old White Lincoln(it’s a 55 in the song)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYqb9jH6bRg
Seeing this car immediately made “In the Still of the Night…” start playing in my head. 🙂
Lincoln in those days was a beautiful understatement, too bad America far and away preferred Cadillacs flashiness.
This shade of pink has to be my favorite color on 50s cars. It looks great on this body style with the white roof.
Its wonderfulness is made eversomuchmoreso by its contrast to the drab grey environment. Today’s monochromatic range of vehicles makes them simply blend in.
Are the little scoops n the rear fenders for air conditioning like the Cadillacs of that era? I cannot remember what Ford’s solution to cooling people was at the time.
Yes, the scoops were air inlets for a trunk-mounted a/c unit. Air blew into plastic tubes that came up out of the rear package shelf and then into ducts under the headliner that fed out of headliner vents. I believe that Lincoln’s first unit that was not in the trunk was in the 58 model.
Here’s a close-up that shows the plexiglass tubes to carry the cool air from the trunk to the passenger compartment.
Oh Yeah! It’s not just a car, it’s a celebration!
I agree this design and such colors were a high point.
This is Sunrise Highway on Long Island. He is probably on his way to the Bellmore train station Friday night car show. Cant make out the town, looks like Merrick.
That is a sharp looking Lincoln!
Back when Lincolns had style before they bland Continental era and the tanklike wallowing turds of the Lido era. I;ll take it in pink to hell with the cost of gas.
That’s a great find. It seems as though virtually all 1956 Lincolns were painted one of four colors – salmon (like this one), yellow, light purple or black.
It’s interesting how handsome this car is, and how a relatively simple facelift for 1957 completely ruined this basic design. And then came 1958…
Not only that, but Ford spent a pile of money completely redesigning the Lincoln body in 1958 after only two years of fairly low production. That was on top of discontinuing the Continental Mark II — which had completely distinct sheetmetal — after only a few years.
The amount of money the so-called whiz kids threw into the premium-priced and luxury car fields was positively staggering. The Edsel was merely the tip of the iceberg. Yet only the 1958-60 T-Bird could be considered a success.
It is surprising to me that the 1956 Lincoln didn’t sell better given that it was the first mass-produced U.S. car to offer the lower, longer, wider look (replete with “cow belly” chassis). Production hit 50,000, which was unusually good for Lincoln but only a third of Cadillac production.
Wisteria . . . .
I confess, I’m not too much of a fan of 1950’s American iron – but this is really gorgeous!
“Unmistakably, the finest in the fine car field.” And it still is. I just love these Lincolns, they had style and panache and prestige, and their color palette was amazing. I have posted before, when I was a class rep in the 11th grade in high school with another girl, her father had this very car, but in white over turquoise with matching leather upholstery. We had occasion to do a lot of after school class activities together, and I often rode with her in her dad’s Lincoln. Even though it was a seven-year old car by then, and the design was dated by comparison to the ’60’s Continentals, it was still, unmistakably, a fine luxury automobile.
Where’s Ed Sullivan and Julia Meade to plug the Lincoln . . . . ??
Cut to Julia Meade in Hollywood!
(Updated, I found the whole ad.)
And here’s a later visit with Ed and Julia introducing the exciting new 1957 Lincoln!
As Ed says, “It not only looks the part, it can play the part too, as you’ll find out once you go to your Lincoln dealer, and drive it for yourself.”
The extroverted styling of these big Lincolns allowed them to carry off the most remarkable color combinations with panache. Not too long ago, “Hemmings Classic Cars” ran an article on a ’56 Lincoln convertible. It was restored in its original lavender (!) with white seats and black carpet, a mix of hues that only George Wright would have dared. Rather than looking like a giant Barbie car, though, it was elegant, and actually tasteful with a bold, “I’ll do it my way” attitude.
What an apparition this would be in a sea of grey minivans.
I spent some time trying to find the ideal soundtrack, but it seems to me that 1956 didn’t produce much music that does this car justice. Maybe it was ahead of its time?
So for pure contemplation I went with Miles Davis from 1959 –
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEC8nqT6Rrk
and for a little more testosterone I threw in Dion & the Belmonts from 1961 –
My favorite Lincoln ever! Mr. Rubano, please keep up the good work.
That’s quite a Pincoln…and to think they had 2 shades available .. this salmon/coral variant AND a rose hue. The Wisteria was a great shade too. Walt Disney liked these, the Disneyland Hotel used limo versions of this vintage Lincoln.
CC Effect!!! On our way out to a quick dinner I saw a car just like this! Just a glimpse and we couldn’t stop (I was already 40 minutes late and she was starving) but I’m certain it was a pink ’56 Lincoln. Fabulous. I haven’t seen one in many years.
And on the way home I spotted a cherry ’58 Studebaker Commander, two-tone!
Nice! Like seeing a pink flamingo amid a bunch of wrens.