Where the Continental Mark IV and Mark V of the ’70s were among Lincoln’s greatest hits, the Lincoln Versailles, a luxo version of the Ford Granada/Mercury Monarch, is often regarded as one of the brand’s most embarrassing flops. Yet, the Versailles was actually a lot more successful than is commonly assumed.
For a lot of auto enthusiasts, the only good thing about the 1977–1980 Lincoln Versailles is its rear axle, which for years was a fairly straightforward way to give a Mustang rear disc brakes. There are still a few Lincoln fans who drank the marketing Kool-Aid and insist the Versailles was a fine “little” Lincoln that’s just misunderstood, but that remains a minority opinion.
There’s a common assumption that the Versailles was hastily contrived for Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) purposes, a way to help Ford balance the thirstier Continentals and Marks. In fact, the concept had originated in 1973, more than two years before the passage of the Environmental Policy and Conservation Act (EPCA), the federal law that established the CAFE requirements. The smaller Lincoln was a response to the Cadillac project that became the 1976 Seville, which Ford knew about well before it actually launched. By the time the automotive press began discussing the “mini-Lincoln” in mid-1974, months after the OPEC embargo, the project had been under way for at least a year.
No one was very surprised to hear that the junior Lincoln would be based on the Ford Granada/Mercury Monarch — an all-new platform would have been prohibitively expensive for a relatively low-volume model — but before launch, most outside observers expected Ford would make a great effort to distinguish the Lincoln version from its cheaper siblings, as Cadillac had distinguished the Seville from the X-body Nova from which it was derived. “The body is a stretch-out of Granada/Monarch, but with major reworking so the relationship won’t be obvious,” Robert Lund confidently reported in the May 1976 Popular Mechanics.
According to Gale Halderman, who headed the Lincoln-Mercury design studio during the development of the Versailles, the designers did propose such a reworking, but Ford Motor Company management didn’t want to make that big an investment. “Our first proposals had much more appearance change in them, but the company was nervous about the program,” Halderman recalled. “They agreed we should have a model to compete with the Seville, but they didn’t want to spend much time or money.”
Ford had backed itself into a corner: Before the Seville actually launched, they insisted on taking a wait-and-see attitude. Even after the OPEC embargo, it wasn’t clear if domestic luxury car buyers would actually accept a “compact” luxury car, and if the Cadillac stumbled out of the gate, Lincoln-Mercury didn’t want to trip over it. However, because Ford waited to see how the Seville performed before committing, there was only so much they could do with the basic package without delaying their launch even further. As it was, the Versailles didn’t debut until spring 1977, two years after the Seville. Chrysler got itself into similar pickles all the time, but it was an embarrassing lapse for Ford, a company that so prided itself on its market research.
Because of those limitations, Halderman said, “we ended up changing the interior more than the exterior. We put a formal Lincoln grille on it and a spare-tire shape on the back.” This flimsy disguise fooled no one. After the Versailles debuted, Road Test quipped that “if you’re the suspicious type you might be tempted to suspect that the Linc/Merc stylists were instructed to make the thing look just like a Lincoln Continental, but not to spend more than $4.98 to do the job.”
The Versailles name, incidentally, was one of the names considered back in 1966 for the car that became the Lincoln Continental Mark III. The name had gotten a positive response in a marketing study, and while it wasn’t used for the Mark III, Lincoln decided it was worth revisiting, and it reappeared as the name of a trim package for the 1976 Mark IV.
Lincoln-Mercury sent out press announcements for the new model in January 1977, although they were embargoed until March 28. The Versailles went on sale on April 15, 1977.
The one thing Ford seemed to have really taken to heart about the Cadillac Seville was that it was a fully equipped car with an ambitious price tag, so the Versailles arrived in a single trim level with extensive standard equipment, including four-wheel disc brakes, aluminum wheels, automatic climate control, power windows, a four-way power Flight Bench front seat, and an AM/FM/MPX radio.
With a starting price of $11,500, the Versailles was $1,859 cheaper than a 1977 Cadillac Seville, but $104 more than the new, much bigger Lincoln Continental Mark V.
Contrary to expectations, the Versailles was not meaningfully “stretched out” compared to the Granada and Monarch. At 200.9 inches overall, the Versailles was 3.2 inches longer than a Monarch, and it was a half-inch wider, but it rode the same 109.9-inch wheelbase and had the same 59.0-inch/57.7-inch track width. The Versailles was 378 lb heavier than a similarly powered Monarch. Most of that was due to its additional equipment, but the Versailles also had an extra 100 lb or so of sound deadening material.
Lincoln made a big deal of Versailles quality control, boasting that “major components are balanced to critical tolerances” and carefully inspected, although a cynic — and it’s very hard not to be cynical when talking about the Versailles — might wonder why Lincoln-Mercury and Ford Motor Company didn’t do that sort of thing as a matter of course. The Versailles did have a higher level of perceived quality than the Monarch, but its repair record was only average.
The most interesting engineering feature of the 1977½ Versailles was that it was the first domestic car with clearcoat paint for a “maximum high gloss finish,” not exactly a high-excitement feature. The 1978 model then became the first Ford product with electronic engine controls, although the initial EEC-I system was only set up to manage ignition timing and exhaust gas recirculation. (Early rumors that the Versailles would have electronic fuel injection like the Seville never panned out.)
Although the 1977½ Versailles had come with the two-barrel 351 engine except in California and high-altitude areas, the 302 became the sole engine for 1978 and later models, with nearly the same horsepower (133 hp versus 135 for the 351), but less torque (243 lb-ft versus 275).
Neither the U.S. Granada nor the Monarch was noted for their performance or road manners, and the heavier, soggier Versailles was no better. It was impressively quiet, but Car and Driver noted that on anything but completely smooth freeways, “the Versailles’s wheels dance over the road while the isolated body undulates up and down.”
Both Consumer Guide and Road Test felt that the excessive suspension compliance was enough to compromise stability — Road Test called the Versailles “a real handful to drive briskly.” Acceleration was okay with the 351, only adequate with the 302, which had an optimistic EPA combined rating of 18 mpg. (Around 16 mpg overall was a more typical real-world figure, although that was better than a Mark V or a Town Car.)
For 1979, the 302 engine got more elaborate EEC-II controls (now managing air-fuel ratio, secondary air injection, idle speed, and evaporative system purge as well as EGR and spark timing — try to contain your excitement), but no more power. Car and Driver needed 12.7 seconds to reach 60 mph; Consumer Guide quoted more than 15 seconds.
The more visible 1979 change was a new roof, accompanied by wider rear doors with larger side windows.
This new roof was a surprisingly crude semi-aftermarket modification. Lincoln-Mercury sent partially completed cars to the American Sunroof Corporation (ASC), which riveted a vinyl-covered fiberglass cap to the steel roof.
ASC also added a vinyl covering over the simulated spare tire hump:
The new roof went a bit further in distinguishing it from the Monarch, and the revised doors made rear-seat entry and exit a bit easier. Lincoln diehards insist that the new roof was a great visual improvement that the Versailles should have had from the outset, but it just looked cobbled-together, and the additional vinyl trim over the fake spare tire hump was a particularly nauseating detail on an already-overdecorated car. Car and Driver editor Don Sherman, looking for the silver lining, suggested that the revised styling had “maybe just the right combination of big bucks and grotesquerie to convince Lincoln buyers that smaller cars are for real.”
As it turned out, the new roof didn’t move the needle on Versailles sales. Model year production rose from a grim 8,931 for 1978 to 21,007 for 1979, but actual calendar year new car sales stayed pretty flat:
- 1977: 13,490
- 1978: 15,747
- 1979: 13,586
- 1980: 4,219
(These figures are only for U.S. sales; the Versailles was also exported in limited numbers, principally to Canada. Total Versailles production was 50,156.)
Lincoln-Mercury had hoped to sell 20,000 cars in the 1977 calendar year and 30,000 in 1978, but the Versailles obviously never came close to that level. Surprisingly, the Versailles didn’t even sell very well in 1979, when a second oil crisis resulted in lines at gas stations and a sharp slump in big-car sales.
Gale Halderman said the Lincoln-Mercury studio did prepare a “very nice looking” new Versailles for 1981, but the company wasn’t interested, so the Versailles expired in May 1980, about two months before the demise of the elderly Falcon-based Granada/Monarch platform. However, for 1982, Lincoln-Mercury launched a new Fox-platform Continental to fill basically the same role.
The Fox Continental was actually a half-inch longer than the Versailles, although wheelbase shrank by 1.3 inches. Style-wise, it was another of Detroit’s early ’80s bustleback horrors, but it was marginally more palatable than the appalling contemporary Seville, it didn’t look like a gussied-up Ford Fairmont, and its modern underpinnings were less mushy than the old Versailles. Despite much higher prices, the Continental sold better, though still not spectacularly.
The 1977–1980 Lincoln Versailles was hardly a smash hit, and Lincoln-Mercury’s swift abandonment of the nameplate suggests a certain institutional self-consciousness, probably related to the model’s mostly terrible critical response. American automotive reviewers of the ’70s generally tiptoed around Detroit’s platform-sharing tendencies, but the fact that the Lincoln-Mercury had done SO little to differentiate the Versailles from the much cheaper Granada and Monarch really seemed to arouse editorial contempt.
On the other hand, because Ford had spent so little money on the Versailles, it ended up being surprisingly successful financially despite its mediocre sales. “Not a great car, but it was a very profitable program,” Halderman said. Since most of the differences between the Versailles and the Monarch or Granada were in interior trim and equipment, per-car margins were very high, and Lincoln-Mercury kept raising prices: to $12,529 for 1978, $12,939 and then $13,446 for 1979, and $14,674 for 1980. “It was a moneymaker while it lasted,” added Halderman.
Often, me-too efforts like the Versailles end up being mediocre sellers. (How many domestic “small car” projects have been undermined by their makers’ tendency to treat them as half-hearted placeholders?) Unlike the 1976 Cadillac Seville, Ford hadn’t tried to make the Versailles a styling leader, and it was hardly class-leading in technology, engineering, or performance.
Instead, Ford gambled that at least some Lincoln-Mercury buyers would pay a hefty premium for a quieter Monarch with a fancier interior and a handful of Lincoln styling cues, and, miraculously, they found just enough takers to put the whole program firmly in the black — one of those rare exceptions that proves the rule.
Related Reading
Curbside Classic: 1977 Lincoln Versailles – Pig In A Poke (by Paul N)
What If: Some Less Granada-esque Versailles Proposals (by Tom Klockau)
Vintage Ad: The 1978 Lincoln Versailles – An Investment In (Badge) Engineering (by Paul N)
Back Row Classic: 1980 Lincoln Versailles – Mixed Messages (by Tom Klockau)
I’ve used to think the 79 refresh looked better but I think the original is less awful. This is what you get when you throw an entire JC Whitney catalog at a Granada. One car I’d really like to experience is the Grand Monarch Ghia that proceeded the Versailles. That car had all of the characteristics of the period American luxury battle cruiser scaled down to something you can actually maneuver. It was less cynical than the Versailles.
My father’s 76 Monarch Ghia was equipped just like a Grand Monarch, but without the sunroof. The Grand package only came in a couple of colors at first and Dad preferred other color choices. The leather interior was really nice and it was quiet, but the car’s simple roots came through in things like broken interior pieces.
In late 1975, my father took delivery of the most loaded-up Monarch I had seen to that point – after a 70 Mark III and a 72 Mark IV. I have always wondered if he would have chosen a Versailles had they been available. I like to think not.
I remember the first one of these I saw. A guy I was with didn’t know it was a Lincoln and tried to compliment the owner by saying “That’s a really nice Granada!” The owner got visibly irked and said something like “It had better be because I paid $12,000 for this Granada!” I couldn’t stop laughing, at both the faux pas and at the irritated owner who really did have a nice Granada.
The Maroon one with bordello red upholstery looks okay, that’s the best I can do here .
-Nate
Like a spiffed up “Monarch”, or “Granada”. Oh. Wait. It is. lol
That’s Cordovan, which was more like dried blood. For that real bordello red vibe, you needed Dark Red, which was added for 1978.
In velour: https://www.orlandoclassiccars.net/vehicles/48/1978-lincoln-versailles
In leather: https://smclassiccars.com/lincoln/717750-1978-lincoln-versailles-coupe-black.html
“It was a moneymaker while it lasted,” added Halderman.
Well, buyers got something that suited their tastes and their financial tolerance. The company generated revenue from it. What more could you want? In that sense: a good car.
At my late age, only now am I seeing a relationship between cars and personal relationships. I was in a personal relationship for years with someone who drove a late model Mark IV. Time and circumstances changed and I was in a relationship for only a few months with someone driving a new Versailles. I was not impressed with the bland car or the bland person. If I recall the Versailles was beige. On the other hand, my life companion of 20 years had no clue about cars in general and was the worst driver I ever knew. A Mensa with a near genius IQ had to be told turn your way or turn my way because left and right did not compute.
The text says there were 100 pounds of sound deadening material in the car. I wonder if it was noticeably quieter. Also, today there are all sorts of high tech sound deadening materials around. Any idea what was used in the 1970s?
I owned a 1977 around 1979-80. It was extremely quiet. I currently have a very nice 1972 Continental Mark IV, and I would say that the Versailles is as quiet or close, to the Mark IV. It had a completely different feel than the Ford Granada. You would have to drive one to appreciate them. They were not just a fancy Granada.
CC Fan: Back in those days, the sound deadening material was simply different thicknesses of the same material you would see under the floor carpeting. Normally it was a grayish color with some other colors mixed in. Not sure if there’s an official name for it, but we all just referred to it as sound deadening material.
Often you could lift up the carpet in the trunk of cars and see that same material. In the cheaper cars, the thin carpet on the trunk was often the only “sound deadening” you got. In cars like the Cimarron/Versailles/Seville, you would see the gray thick material under the trunk carpet. As a comparison, in a car like the Buick Skyhawk, you may see a much thinner material and in the Cavalier you may just see the trunk carpet only. (I used those two J cars to compare with the Cimarron in my example).
There were actually four principal types of sound deadening in this era: The under-carpet padding Dan describes is called “jute,” which is a kind of coarse fiber. There were also separate fiber pads added in certain areas, which damped vibration; depending on the location, some of the pads might be plastic-coated. Ford also made extensive use of mastic, which is a type of resin, and of spray-on sound deadener, which fills up small gaps to prevent NVH transmission.
How these materials were applied obviously varied between models and sometimes between body styles, since not all cars have the same NVH paths. Starting in the mid-’60s, Ford got into the practice of adding more sound deadening to pricier models, since it was an easy way to make them feel nicer and more upscale.
When you look at it and its competition…meh…was all over the industry.
Keep in mind that the Versailles and the Monarch were sold in the same dealerships often parked side by side. How anyone didn’t see that was a smoke and mirror show is beyond me.
Actually, this “smoke and mirrors” thing is common in almost every industry where there are items for sale to the public, Even in the grocery store, it’s marketing over everything. Do you buy the store brand of canned peas, or the Del Monte brand? They are literally produced in the same factory, same can, different label. But quite a few will always pick the Del Monte because it’s “better” in their mind.
Did those folks in the Lincoln Mercury dealership see Monarchs and Versailles next to each other? Quite likely, but the Monarch buyer didn’t cross shop a Versailles, nor did a Versailles buyer cross shop the Monarch, for the most part. It was no more different than anyone could not see that an Impala, a Bonneville, a LeSabre and a Deville were all based on the same basic platform. Was the Versaille an egregious reach by FoMoCo? Or were they just peddling what the buyers wanted? Nobody was forced to buy any specific model, so it seems there were enough buyers to make FoMoCo’s investment a wise one.
The Seville looked, at best, distantly related to the Nova. The Versailles looked like a Monarch in a rental tux.
Agreed. The front head on view of Versailles definitely looks “Lincolnesque”, but ANY other view looks spot on Granada. Even the view of the back, the “Continental hump” looks like.. a Granada with a Continental Hump. And for the love of all that is holy.. the Vinyl covering on it?.. Yikes.
I used to have a 75 Granada (302) which was great, for a Granada.
I have a 77 Mark V, which is great, for a Lincoln. Each one (separately) does their own thing. Never, would I dream of trying to combine the two.
I can easily see the Versailles being a huge reason that GM thought the Cavalier-based Cimarron would be a good idea. As pointed out in the article, as miserable as the Versailles might have otherwise been, it made money for Ford. So, too, would the Cimarron make money for GM, at least in the short-term considering how much it would debase the brand for future products. As bad as the Versailles might have been, I don’t think it had the same same long-term impact on the Lincoln brand like the Cimarron had on Cadillac.
But the one thing I simply cannot get over on the Versailles is how cynical that Continental hump looks. OTOH, if someone actually felt it gave a classy touch (in the same way something from the JC Whitney catalog might), it would be a simple matter to dig a Versailles trunk lid up from a boneyard and slap it onto their Granada or Monarch.
Should “Lincoln-Mercury sent out press announcements for the new model in January 1977, although they were embargoed until March 28. The Versailles went on sale on April 15, 1975.”
read January 1975?
Oops, that was a typographical error — it should be April 15, 1977.
Lincoln Design Heritage by Jim and Cheryl Farrell showed a picture of a proposed Versailles on the 114 inch wheelbase Panther platform as well as a Fox platform version that looked similar to the 1981 Granada.
Ok, so I admit that I’m one of those who falls into loving the Versailles. I’ve always been a fool for the smaller luxury cars. Yes, I also love the Cimarron. With that said, I’ve also been an owner.
My first of two Versailles was a twin to the 1977 car featured in your article. Same cloth seat, same colors, same rims, same pin stripe. A total twin. I purchased it used from the original older couple in MI and drove it home that same day to northwest IL. It made the trip with no issues. My second was a 1979 in black with tan leather. Sadly, that car was purchased from a guy who knew he was passing along a car that needed a lot of work but said otherwise. But I purchased it in TN and drove it also back to NW IL with no bad issues. After fixing the problems, it was a nice car. I always liked the more formal look of the 79/80 cars, but the 1977 drove nicer. I didn’t care about the performance and didn’t want them for a sporty feel. I loved the smaller luxury and ride.
For comparison, I also have owned several Seville’s from the 1979 up to the most recent 1986. Again, loved the smaller luxury car. Finally, I’ve owned exactly 1 Cimarron: A 1988 that I recently sold. Of the bunch, I actually preferred the Cimarron over the rest. A great size car with lots of luxury features that would handle well and still rode nicely. Call me a chump, but I love these odd smaller luxury models.
I have to imagine that when the Versailles was introduced, there were still some folks at Ford who had been around for the launch of the Falcon. I wonder if they were amazed or disgusted at what had become of their Falcon.
There were certainly people around who were there when the Falcon launched, but the original Falcon doesn’t seem like the kind of car for which designers and engineers would have a lot of nostalgic affection.
Also, I suspect the original Falcon program was a pretty miserable experience for the people involved. It was done at an accelerated pace, and they were juggling cost and weight targets that were crazy-strict. The engineers were forced to sign weight pledges for specific components, so if something didn’t hit its mark, they’d be held individually responsible. Sounds like a project from hell, TBH!
The Granada-Monarch in Lincoln disguise fooled nobody, but it STILL was a nicer and way better built car than Cadillac`s suicidal Cimaron of a few years later.
lolol Yeah, “Cimaron”, was all about badges. Just badges.
Like you, I’ve also always had a thing for cars that were considered odd ducks and underachievers. The Lincoln Versailles, Cadillac Cimarron, and both the early 1980s and early 1990s Chrysler Imperial among them. There’s something about taking a “basic” car and transforming it into a Cinderella that I find fascinating. I remember only seeing three Versailles in the wild in my life. One in my town back in the 1970s when I was a child, one in a neighboring city in the 1990s, and a beautiful Diamond Blue one in a junkyard in the early 2000s. All of the glitz and glamor of a full-sized Continental distilled to a more manageable size. What’s not to love? Here’s to Versailles, Cimarron and all the other odd ducks that help make the automotive world more interesting!
Amen to that Jonathan. You are speaking my language.
“if the Cadillac stumbled out of the gate, Lincoln-Mercury didn’t want to trip over it.”
And yet they did just exactly that with the bustle back look
Interesting to me that it appears to use the GM A6 compressor. Guess the usual York or Tecumseh wouldn’t fit under the hood?
It might not be original, none of the auction listings are very specific about that kind of thing.
Lincoln began using GM A6 compressors during the 1971 model year for its “regular” Continentals and Mark IIIs.
Thanx!
I worked as a skycap at an airport in Charleston, WV and always talked to people about their cars. The people who drove these absolutely loved how quiet and smooth they were. Viewing from curbside, I thought they were very striking and the interiors smelled like quality leather because almost every interior surface, including dashboard, was wrapped in leather.
I’ve read about the Versailles before, but this is exactly the kind of great and comprehensive article from Aaron that got me coming back to his other site back in the 2000s. Thoroughly enjoyed this.
I used to think I preferred the ’79 restyle by a wide margin, and I still prefer it, but seeing it side by side next to the original makes the Granada / Monarch styling seem more organic, including the more sloped backlight.
I honestly think a ’77 Granada Ghia with those great road wheels would have been enough for me. Use some of that leftover money to Dinol Tuff-Kote the thing, pocket the rest, and call it a day.
I do think the front of the Versailles is genuinely attractive for a U S. luxury car, and I like its face better than that of the ’82 Continental.
Another great article, Aaron.
I think your title is a perfect encapsulation of the Versailles’ contrasts. Basically, Ford could do almost everything wrong and still make money. The only way they really suffered was the embarrassment as the Seville destroyed them in sales numbers—one year of baby Cadillac sales outsold all of Versailles production.
I’ll have to write about the last of the line at some point.
An interesting article on a car I knew little about, thank you JPC. Quite an odd pastiche of styling cues, especially in the square-roof facelift model, but then again, the late 70s were a strange time for car design. In fact, that vinyl-trimmed tyre hump neatly sums up the worst of the 70s’ tasteless excesses…
“In fact, that vinyl-trimmed tire hump neatly sums up the worst of the 70s’ tasteless excesses…”
I suspect the main market for such ingredients in the southeast of Murrica..
I am the former owner of a low mileage 1979 Versailles that I brought into California from another State in the early 2000’s. I really liked my Lincoln. The ride was much more controlled and smoother than an equivalent Granada, the 302 was silky, and it had crushed red velour seats that had to be seen to be believed. The car was an excellent interstate cruiser, soaking up bumps and miles with ease. My co-workers referred to it as the “Ghetto Granada”, which I just laughed at. Unfortunately, its downfall was not being able to get it to pass California Smog and I had to give it up.
135 horsepower from a 351. Unbelievable. Hiway robbery it was.
A 1977 BMW 530i, 6 cylinder was 177 hp. No wonder Detroit lost out.
The photos labeled Primo Auto Action come from Bill of Curious Cars.
Below is his assessment of the Versailles.
Pay attention to 18:51 where he describes the paint…hilarious!!
I think Lincoln should have called the ’82 Continental a Versailles instead. New vehicle lines need time to establish themselves. And the Continental name deserved more respect. But the Gen 1 and 2 Versailles should have had hidden headlights, which by then was Lincoln DNA. The original Versailles looked like a Mercury Cougar up front.