Some months back I was running errands for my family when I spotted this gorgeous black beast pull up next to me near LAX.
There were / are a few hints that there may be more to this Lincoln than meets the eye. Its bouncy ride, hunkered-down stance, and relatively flat cornering indicate that this car’s chassis isn’t strictly stock anymore. Who knows what lurks under that curvaceous body?
When the light turned green the car zipped away effortlessly, with far more gusto than its stock flathead V12 would ever be capable of. I would love to know what’s in that thing- a heavily reworked flathead? Later Y-block? Trusty old Windsor? The ubiquitous small-block Chevy? The new-school-cool GM LS? Perhaps something totally unexpected?
Thanks to the wonky driver’s side window in my F250, as well as the line of impatient drivers behind me, this is the only shot I could get of the front end. The grille denotes this car as a 1946-1949. Earlier prewar versions had a more delicate ( and better-looking in my opinion ) vertical waterfall-style grille.
I have to admit that I was never a huge fan of these. To me, the styling seems to be an odd mishmash of prewar and postwar, American and European styling cues. Even so, I’m happy to see this one being carefully preserved and enjoyed by its owner. Several years back I saw a news clip where one of these was destroyed in one of California’s many wildfires. It was a heartbreaking sight. Hopefully nothing like that ever befalls this Lincoln or its surviving brethren.
Bonus pic: check out the mid-90’s Honda Accord doing a CC photobomb 🙂 .
Woah, nice find! I am trying to ID those wheels/wheelcovers but am failing.
I think they may be from some early postwar Caddy, Pontiac, or Olds but I can’t be sure.
I’m gonna take a stab….a 1960 Caddy Eldo?
No license plate?
I agree that the pre-war model looked much better. From the front this could almost be mistaken for a Cadillac. Even the wheelcovers look vaguely Cadillac…ish?
The Lincoln Continental Cabriolet version was always nicer looking and cleaner in appearance. Top up or top down. The greenhouse of the “club coupe” (a.k.a. 2-door sedan) always seemed a bit fussy.
Over a decade ago, in an essay for a class on Art & Culture, I described the difference between the 1940 vs. 1947 Lincoln Continental as, “a great example of things to come in automotive design. It also serves as a microcosmic metaphor for the transition from the tasteful austerity and graceful Art Deco influenced style of pre-war America to the beginnings of post-war stylistic excess taken to gargantuan proportions.”
The pre-war versions of most American cars were streamlined, tasteful sculpture, the post-war models began to look like garish jukeboxes.
I wonder if the “jukeboxing” that occurred to cars after WW II was part and parcel of the whole “you sacrificed for years, now is the time to treat yourself” movement that (seemed) to occur with all consumer products?
Who knows what is under the hood of this one, but I have always been intrigued by the Lincoln/Ford Truck 337 flathead. No question the Lincoln V-12 needed to be replaced and a large engine was needed for the new 1948 Ford F7 and F-8 ‘Big Job’ trucks, but why did Ford design a new engine on the cusp of obsolescence? Although the 337 was reliable, it was completely outclassed by the ’49 Cadillac and Olds OHV V-8’s, and on the truck side the Ford 337 was even a bit lacking compared to the larger GMC, IH, and REO OHV in-line 6’s. In any event, the 337 was only around 3 model years in the Lincoln (4 in the larger Ford trucks) until it was replaced with the Lincoln Y-block.
BTW- If I owned that featured Lincoln, I would have a Lincoln Y-block in it.
It is difficult to overstate the degree to which the Ford Motor Company was out of gas by the end of the war. The company became an almost complete reboot. They needed to go outside to hire a new chief engineer (Harold Youngren from Oldsmobile). They had all they could do to design a new car (3 of them, actually). They had only so many resources and needed a new Lincoln engine in a hurry. Lincoln’s sales were somewhere between disastrous and pathetic so there was no economic case to be made for an all-new engine that quickly. The Lincoln Y block would be out by 1953 so there was some long-term planning going on but all of their knowhow, machinery, processes etc were for flathead V8s. An adequate engine now was probably seen as better than a really good engine later. I think they did the best they could given the situation they faced and the resources they had.
Wondering why Lincoln was suffering so much in the immediate postwar period when Packard was using the same antiquated straight-8 engine they’d had since the ’30s, and they were even outselling Cadillac until about 1949 or so. So what did Packard have that Lincoln did not?
This Lincoln has beautiful lines but it seemed to date pretty quickly postwar. The “bathtubs” from 1949 onwards also seemed to date very fast.
Packard had an engine that would hold together for a long time with any reasonable kind of maintenance. Lincoln did not. The Packard 8 was a solid old lump, very heavy but very durable. The Lincoln 292 V-12 was adapted from the Ford flathead V8. The Ford engine had its design issues and they were made worse when 4 more cylinders were added. Plus the Lincoln engine used hydraulic lifters (for quiet running). These suffered from oil pressure problems at low rpms and oil sludging/coking from too-high running temperatures. I have read that a 30k mile rebuild was not unheard of back in the day.
Also Lincoln still used the Ford transverse springs and solid front axle long after everyone (besides Ford and Mercury) had gone to independent front suspension. The Lincoln was a beautifully styled and trimmed 1935 car. And not a particularly good 1935 car.
My Dad’s 1947 Lincoln sedan suffered, or he suffered, from that V-12. As he said, it ate fuel pumps on a trip or two between New York State and Florida. Best feature, from my 7 year old point of view, was the floor button operated signal seeking radio! Replaced it with a 1949 Buick Roadmaster sedanette… ah heaven.
Great find. Sinister looking old beast, sounds like the drivetrain has been updated to give some bark to it’s bite. Back in the early post WW2 years, the automakers had no problem selling anything they could build with the shortage of new cars being available back then. Dad bought a new Crosley in ’46, it was the only new car he could get his hands on at the time.
Just a small correction, there was a 1942 restyle that was built for a few months before car production ended for WW2. Nice find.
Even when these cars were fairly new, the problematic V12 was often replaced by a Cadillac V8, either flathead or OHC. Those are standard 1956 Cadillac hub caps with a custom cone for the center. I also prefer the earlier Continental design but I wouldn’t turn this one down.
Many of FoMoCo’s ills back then could be directly blamed on ol’ Henry’s stubborn refusal to modernize and diversify his product lines to suit the changing market. Flathead engines and mechanical brakes were already obsolete before the Allies and the Axis ever fired a single shot, but stubborn Henry wouldn’t give an inch.
It wasn’t until his disgruntled former employees over at Chevrolet and Chrysler began cleaning his clock that he stood up and took notice. And even then he balked at the idea of updating his cars in any significant fashion.
Nevermind the Accord, those are still rather common even here in the rust prone Midwest. Same shot there’s a Chrysler Concord. When was the last time you saw one of those on the road?