For a significant chunk of the American public, cars like this immaculate, ultra-low-mileage 1979 Lincoln Continental Town Car — last of the really gigantic Lincolns — once represented the peak of owner-driven automotive prestige and status. For my generation, it seems more like a prop from Goodfellas, or a livery service town car. It’s a car far too big for a more compact modern life style — or to want to drive yourself.
When I first spotted the listing for this black Lincoln, my immediate, unkind thought was, “Well, I guess mobsters need to go to the airport too.” That was admittedly unfair: Lincoln-Mercury sold 92,600 of these Continentals for 1979 (more than 80 percent of them four-door sedans), and most of those probably went to plausibly upstanding private citizens, not made guys or car services. Still, with its sinister black paint and matching “Coach-Vinyl” landau half-top, this Continental is the kind of car that makes you expect someone else to hold the door open for you.
These final truly gargantuan Lincolns represented the pinnacle of American luxury car buyers’ obsession with both “formal” styling and sheer size. This 1979 Continental sedan stretched 233 inches long on a 127.2-inch wheelbase and was just a hair under 80 inches wide. It was about the same size as a 1976 Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham (which was actually fractionally larger in a couple of dimensions), but the Fleetwood had been downsized for 1977. The almost-as-Brobdingnagian Chrysler New Yorker had followed suit for 1979, as had the Lincoln’s frequent showroom-mate, the Mercury Marquis. Lincoln’s time was coming — both the Continental and the Mark would be downsized for 1980, becoming merely very large — but the big Continental endured for one final season, last of the true, unapologetic Detroit dinosaurs.
1979 was also arguably the last gasp of the styling themes of the 1961 Continental that had once saved the Lincoln brand. The actual 1961-vintage unitized platform was long gone, of course, traded in 1970 for a perimeter frame chassis like those of lesser Ford Motor Company big cars. Both the older MEL engine and later 460-cid V-8 were also gone, replaced by the smaller and lighter S-code 400-2V engine, making a meager 159 net hp. The front-end styling now looked like the Mark V or the now-departed Chrysler, with a pseudo-Rolls-Royce grille and concealed headlamps. However, especially in black, you can still see the chrome-edged bladed fenders that tie this Continental stylistically to its 1961 ancestor.
(It may surprise you to learn that with a base curb weight of 4,843 lb, the 1979 Continental was actually about 375 lb lighter than a similarly equipped 1961 Lincoln, which was quite a bit smaller on the outside. Some of that was due to the newer car’s smaller engine, but Ford had also learned a few things about structural engineering in the interim.)
I would describe the styling of the final giant Continental as a bit fussy and rather severe (although the latter quality is of course accentuated by this car’s black paint). Its detailing was actually fairly restrained for a car of this type — there was a lot of brightwork, but except for the startlingly expensive premium side moldings (a $136 option), the bright trim accented the edges of surfaces rather than overwhelming the eye like some American cars of the ’50s. On the Continental sedan, the result was a kind of grave Rolls-Royce dignity to go with the appropriated grille. The contemporary Mark V, which was almost as big, felt comparatively insouciant, accentuated by its array of flashy color options. The Continental sedan seemed like the older, sterner, more uptight brother.
This Continental is a Town Car, which at this point was a $1,527 option package for the $12,093 Continental sedan. It bundled together various equipment otherwise sold separately, like power vent windows (power side windows were already standard), 6-way power seats, coach lamps, and a full vinyl roof. The turbine styled aluminum wheels were a $373 option.
The landau-style half-top with its frenched backlight was an extra $285 on the Town Car, and opera windows added $99. Even with those features, the Town Car wasn’t the fanciest four-door Continental available in 1979; there were also even pricier Williamsburg Edition and Collector’s Series sedans, the latter listing for more than $16,000.
In addition to its extra convenience features, the Town Car package included Twin Comfort Lounge Seats (a split bench front seat with dual fold-down center armrests) and your choice of leather or Vallaeo velour upholstery. If you wanted something less Goth, there were eight other interior color choices besides black — Champagne wasn’t nearly so funereal.
There was plenty of space in back for the capo di tutti i capi and at least one trusted lieutenant, although as far as I can see from the dealer literature, Lincoln didn’t offer any true owner-passenger luxuries, like rear-seat heater or radio controls or folding “picnic tables” for signing vital documents. Perhaps Lincoln was missing a bet there — with cars like this, it was not unlikely that the paying customers would be riding in back.
To me, cars like this Continental remain considerably more satisfying to ride in than to actually drive, except perhaps for long trips on the interstate. With the speed control engaged, the automatic temperature control set, and a stack of appropriate cassette tapes for the four-speaker stereo, the driver could stretch out and relax almost as well as the passengers, inconvenienced only by the need to stay awake.
In the rest of the real world — on narrow city streets or in crowded parking lots, or even on stretches of highway too choppy for soft Lincoln shock absorbers to cope with — this Continental would often be an unreasonable amount of car to manage. I’m not talking here about fuel consumption (if you blanched at 12 mpg, you wouldn’t buy a car like this in the first place), or “handling” in the car magazine sense, just the basic practical challenges of maneuvering a vehicle the size of an aircraft carrier in everyday traffic. You might as well leave it to the hired help.
I am separated from cars like the Town Car by a significant generation gap. The final extra-large Continentals departed while I was still in grade school, and they had never been part of my sphere in any case. When I think “Town Car,” the first thing that springs to mind is the later FN-36 Panther-platform version pictured above, which was more than a foot shorter and about half a ton lighter than the 1979 model. The Panther Town Car already seemed absurdly big to me by the standards of the 1990s, and after I moved to Los Angeles, it was not the sort of thing I saw very often except around the airport or perhaps in gangster movies. I knew that 20 years earlier, many affluent Americans, even in Los Angeles, routinely drove cars like this, but I don’t think I could ever really get my head around it. It seemed like more hassle than luxury.
F. Scott Fitzgerald famously wrote that the very rich are different from you and me, which comes down to perspective as well as resources. When I see cars in this class, I’m inevitably tempted to ask silly questions like, “How do you park that thing? Don’t rich people ever go to the grocery store?” The answer is that for the most part, they don’t — today, of course, they could just have their groceries delivered, like even middle-class people often do since 2020, but before that, they probably just sent the maid out to periodically restock the pantry. How do you park such a car? For the original intended audience, the answer was usually, “You hand the keys to the valet.”
Of course, you CAN use a giant battle cruiser of a car as a daily driver, even in places like Tokyo (as Tatra87-sensei has shown us), white-knuckling your way through the congested traffic and even parallel parking the behemoth for sheer love of the game. However, that wasn’t what Lincoln (or Cadillac, or Chrysler) originally had in mind.
The people who designed these cars have said that this era’s big Lincolns were near and dear to the hearts of senior Ford executives because this is what most senior Ford executives drove, or were driven in. The Continental and Mark were optimized for their cloistered environment: the circuit from the office in Dearborn to a house in Bloomfield Hills or Grosse Pointe to the country club or some posh restaurant — a universe of straight roads, smooth pavement, and valet attendants. Some executives drove themselves, some didn’t, but even those who did were typically well-insulated from mundane indignities like potholes and street parking. For the people who lived in that world, a car like this involved no particular sacrifices other than money, which was incidental.
For those of us who’ve never had that kind of lifestyle, and whose everyday environment (even in this fairly affluent part of town) includes abundant cracked pavement, neck-snapping drainage dips, and parking lots that can make even a C-segment compact sedan feel too big, a car like this Continental is something to gawk at rather than aspire to. It just wouldn’t make sense, even if I could otherwise afford it.
And, I don’t think I could afford it. Late ’70s Lincolns are generally not catastrophically expensive to buy (though feeding them is another matter), but this one’s pristine condition and extremely low mileage (just 1,760 miles when these photos were taken in late 2023) seemed to set off a kind of bidding frenzy on Bring a Trailer, pushing the final selling price to a hefty $57,250. It seems that some people still love the idea of living this large, whether they actually do or not.
Related Reading
Curbside Classic: 1977 to 1979 Lincoln Continental – A Bit Of Sunshine Defies The Gloomy Days (by Jason Shaefer)
CC Capsule: 1979 Lincoln Continental Town Car – Built To Last (by Joseph Dennis)
In-Motion Classic: 1979 Lincoln Continental Town Car – Sunday Best (by Joseph Dennis)
Curbside Classic: 1979 Lincoln Continental Town Car — Sometimes, More Is More (by Eric703)
After having driven a few of these, make mine a 1974 model please. I’d like the moss green with the matching interior in velour.
Lincoln dash boards still included all the gauges then.
My dad owned a 74 and from what I recall, that car gave him zero issues.
Truth be known, as a kid, I thought I wanted one of these. Then in 1984 we rented a new 85 TC which was so much better. Finally we bought a 95-best of the lot.
Cool cars maybe at one time. I’ll stick with my 78 Fleetwood thanks!
Wow, what an absolutely beautiful car. I have never seen one in all black. It’s stunning.
I went looking for the vent windows in the BaT photos, and they’re very hard to see. Of the relevant shots – that is, the ones that show the doors – four of them show the vent windows and six do not. This implies that BaT or the seller thought it was a good idea to photograph the car with the windows down more than half the time (if Aaron’s selection is a fair sample, which of course it has no need to be.) Seems an odd choice.
At the time, I thought the 1975-1979 Town Cars looked ridiculous, although they certainly seemed to sell better than the previous generation. I never drove one, but I did get considerable seat time in the early Panther Town Cars, and they were great cars if you met them on their own terms: that is, police-package handling wasn’t on the menu, so it was pointless to expect it.
Our family called these Lincolns – only a big LTD. Our family simply drove Cadillacs. We bought a brand new red 1976 Cadillac Coupe de Ville that summer. Only to be replaced by a beautiful white 1979 Cadillac Eldorado. In our world, Lincoln was not even a competitor.
I absolutely love Continentals and I would have this over a ’79 Cadillac (a Mark V would be even better), but I agree that triple black is not a good fit.
I see your point regarding the use as daily driver, but I recall a good number of these as well as other similar luxo-barges being driver by the owner back in the day.
Granted, the setting was generally what you described – country club, Galeria, fine restaurants; size did not seem much of a problem with wide lanes and huge parking lots
I also have vague memories of mostly white colors, but being Texas, few would choose a black car…
It is sobering to realize that a standard (short) bed 2026 F-150 Crew Cab is only exactly ONE inch shorter than this. And with the optional longer bed at 6.5ft (that would still be scoffed at by “real” tradesmen) it is 11″ longer than this Lincoln. And is also 80″ wide (without mirrors).
Even more sobering is that the sale figure represents a return to the seller of only $101.50 a month to store, presumably insure it, and at least minimally service it since new since it obviously wasn’t driven. I have to wonder if that all worked out in any way remotely as originally envisioned.
I’ll swing the other way than most though and find the triple black to actually work well, perhaps ruined only a little by the association with all of the cheap glorified taxi all black airport “limo” Lincoln Town Car services etc over the years.
And it’s still 2.5″ shorter than a 1973 Imperial.
As to that “return to the seller”, it wasn’t so much an actual return as inflation made his return quite negative. This car cost some $72k when new in adjusted dollars, so he’s more like $15k in the hole, never mind the cost of storing it and such. Maybe he just liked to go and sit in it in the garage?
Hope the buyer isn’t expecting to flip this car a few years later and make a handsome profit. He could have sunk that 57K into AMD, spring 2025, at $102.
Yes that was my point, it is a mediocre return, or more to the point, a negative one. The overwhelming majority of cars are not good “investments”, and no 1970s Lincoln can be considered “art” as some cars can. The real return on an automotive investment is the use (and in some cases, enjoyment), one gets out of the thing. Storing it for someone else in the future is a poor financial decision.
Unless Paul’s last sentence is the true reality, maybe the original owner just liked having it, without any thought of investment. Lots of people are like that myself included, as I’ll throw thousands into my car on a whim for it to continue be worth probably what I paid for it used 20 years ago.
Sure, therefore the reason I specifically wrote “The real return on an automotive investment is the use (and in some cases, enjoyment), one gets out of the thing”.
With so little mileage, the triple-black car pictured here had clearly been in climate-controlled long-term storage most of its life, and the seller in the Bring a Trailer auction was a dealer that had acquired the car (likely from the original owner’s estate) in September 2023. So, I think we can reasonably assume that the original owner did not drive it or even get much enjoyment from it except in a very abstract sense, and it WAS likely stored away as an investment.
If it had 17,600 miles, it might have been Grandpa’s pampered but beloved toy. With 1,760 miles and seats that look like they’d barely ever been sat on, it seems more like, “That car Grandpa bought in 1979 and put in storage because he insisted that once cars like this were extinct, it would be worth a fortune.”
(The listing includes both the original window sticker, a reproduction, and a Deluxe Marti report. I don’t see the original selling date, but the car was built on May 15, 1979, and was originally sold at Mike Dilber Lincoln-Mercury in Grosse Pointe Farms, probably in the latter part of the 1979 model year. Even taking for granted that the car got an extensive detailing prior to auction, I am somewhat skeptical that it saw public roads through even one Michigan winter. It may have been driven a bit to break it in before it went into storage, but not much more than that.)
Agreed.
Cars (normal cars) are not purchased for investment. This is known to most people and ESPECIALLY to people with money, likely the target audience for the subject car. Rich people usually have a handle on the investment thing, they buy big expensive cars as a tool, a Big cushy comfy status- symbol-y tool to get from wherever to wherever. When it’s not (as) new & shiny & better anymore, they get the next thing.
I knew of one for sale last summer at 37,000 miles for $27K. Black outside but red inside. Quite the contrast. Whether my fellow Cougar Club members car sold, or not, I don’t know.
One of my uncles owned a small car lot up the road from our farm. Al was a very big man in height and weight. So he liked big cars. Some times he would pick up a one year old Cadillac or Lincoln for himself to drive for a while before putting it on the lot for sale. Family get togethers were always a blast for me to see what uncle Al and aunt Rita would drive up in.
One day, they arrived driving this stunning dark blue Lincoln Continental Collectors Series sedan with the dark blue leather. It was a super loaded car and I fell in love with it even though my parents were Cadillac drivers. I was amazed that the blue Lincoln Al drove up in had an MSRP of around $19,200 back in 1979. To a young farm boy, that was like a million bucks!!
In the mid ’80s I had a co-worker who bought one of these last whoppers in ’79, same formal black but with gray leather, a very pretty combination. We loved it when she took us all to lunch, agreed it’s better to ride in than to drive. We had a taupe metallic ’75 with only 19k miles in the late 80s and it was indeed just too big. didn’t keep it too long. Our ’78 Electra was just as comfortable, rode better imo, and so much better in every way.
Those cars were good at being what they are, if that makes any sense. I generally prefer Cadillacs of that vintage, but these Town Cars had a certain character and I like the look of them. Seems they were all over L.A., Beverly Hills, and Hollywood in the late 70’s. These cars were also commonly driven by T.V. villians around the same time. It was too bad the anemic 400 replaced the still powerful 460 in 1979, the girth and weight of these cars required at least 200 h.p. to move around adequately.
The black on black on black may be a bit much…maybe dark blue would have been a better choice. I drove a 74 a couple of times, but it was yellow with beige leather and the vibe was completely different due to the lighter colors. My primary issue with big Lincolns from this era is the steering wheel. It’s the same as a Pinto or an F150 with cruise control controls added. Something a little more special would have been nice.
“How do you park such a car? For the original intended audience, the answer was usually, ‘You hand the keys to the valet.'”
I was the valet! In this era, I was a teen-aged parking valet at a *very* wealthy country club in suburban NYC. While many of the younger and more ostentatious club members had switched to Mercedes, etc., there were still plenty of more senior members who hung on to Town Cars and Cadillacs.
Despite their size, the Town Cars were some of the *easiest* cars to park. The blades on the front fenders and the vestigial fins on the back made it really easy to know exactly where the 4 corners of the car were, especially if the driver (me) wasn’t driving it regularly like the owners did. I’d rather park one of these than the bustleback Sevilles!
Yes!!!! Being able to see the actual end corners is something entirely lost on modern cars AND trucks! backup cameras mostly solved the rear problems but not quite up front. These sheer size of these still presents fitment challenges if the spaces are tight but they’re not as difficult as they or their specs imply due to being able to actually see where the ends are, and like most things with experience it becomes natural where the stops and restarts diminish into clean Maneuvering.
And I speak with experience, my First car was my Cougar and my daily driver for years, tight spots and parking was second nature to me. After I decided to not run it into the ground(and save some fuel expenses) with my Focus that I now drive far more often than I ever did the Cougar it’s spoiled me and the Cougar feels massive on its weekend drives, but I distinctly remembered it didn’t use to and usually by the end of fall where I’d been driving it more consistently the second nature comes back to me. These Lincoln’s are much bigger yet, but I imagine it’s a similar experience unless you’re driving one in tight European cities.
Being able to see the corners is certainly useful for being able to place the thing, but it doesn’t change the unwieldiness of the exterior dimensions.
It’s like I said it’s something one would get used to and hopefully gain the wherewithal of where to attempt to park or avoid. It’s no different than a modern pickup, but I’d argue these had better visibility to its ends.
I don’t know why this is not coming through, but I am not talking about familiarity, I am talking about “a lot of places that I routinely drive in West Los Angeles and its environs are simply no longer sized for vehicles like this.” For example, the black Continental would fill so much of my assigned parking space that it would be really challenging getting in or out of the car unless my neighbors were away, and it’s so long that the tail would stick out into the alley a concerning amount. Parking lots around here have mostly “compact car” parking spaces as they try to squeeze more spaces into existing lots. Street parking is now frequently marked into defined spaces whose dimensions a vehicle in this size class sorely tests. Credit me with being able to observe my own urban environment, at least!
People with giant trucks and SUVs also run into these problems. When the nearby mall was still open, the parking structure was marked with paint scars on every ramp from people scraping, and about once a month, someone’s SUV would scrape the low-hanging pipes in the entryway because people ignored the height limit warning signs. (The Continental at least wouldn’t suffer that issue.) When someone has a giant pickup around here, they not infrequently end up taking up multiple adjacent spaces like an ass. It’s like an adult trying to sit in the chairs in a grade school classroom.
A stunner .
I remember these when new, so darn BIG but if that’s what one wanted FoMoCo was happy to oblige =8-) .
-Nate
These were huge cars simply for the reason of being huge. It seems to me that Ford was trying to make the largest car they could and still have it legal. I have never driven a four door, but I have driven a Mk V at length. The Mk V is about the most difficult car to park than any other car I have ever driven. The long front overhang makes getting into small spaces very difficult.
The featured car here is gorgeous. The leather looks better than a Cadillac.
I owned a ’75 Town Car for several years. It remains one of the half-dozen favorite cars I have owned. Other favorites include a ’73 Vette, a ’87 Thunderbird Turbo Coupe, a ’99 Lincoln Continental, my current ’12 Mustang Shelby Cobra GT500 and my current ’25 Genesis GV70.
My red/maroon ’73 Lincoln had a smog control crippled 460 with 206 net HP. While not powerful by today’s standards, the 460 felt stronger than it actually was (0-60 in 12 seconds, 1/4 mile in 19). However, we have to remember the times and the purpose of the vehicle. My Lincoln was not designed to win on the dragstrip or corner well on a road course. It was designed to be a presence, to make a statement and to carry it’s driver and passengers in luxury and total comfort. It met those criteria exceedingly well. It was unsurpassed as a highway cruiser. Yes, mileage was poor, but gas was still reasonably cheap. I never really had a problem parking it. Most surprisingly it was great in the snow, as long as you didn’t want to turn sharply! With good snow tires (only on the rear in those days) it would accelerate quite well, and once up to speed, it was very stable. In addition, if there was a 2 or 3 foot high snowdrift blocking the road, no problem — just drive through it. I did that numerous times. Another plus was that no top of the car ski rack was needed for snow skis. Even tho snow skis were quite long in the ’70’s, they easily fit in the huge trunk.
Based on what the car was designed to do, it strongly succeeded!
I’d daily drive the hell out of this or something similar or bigger. Had a Cadillac Fleetwood as a daily driver for many years – and not in the US either. It does help that I do most of my short trips (shopping etc) by bicycle so I would not be contending with tight situations as much, it’d be mostly open road driving.
Ideally I’d want it in a different colour with bordello red velour, preferably with a pattern like the red Cadillac Eldorado that was on here the other day
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/design/1975-cadillac-eldorado-was-this-cadillacs-loudest-cloth-upholstery-of-the-1970s/
One of my uncles drove Cadillacs in the ’60s, then switched to a ’72 Continental, the first year of the Continental with the “Town Car” option. He and his wife, who drove a leftover ’71 Coupe de Ville, loved that car and kept it longer than any my uncle owned in that time of his life. My parents owned a white 72 Continental coupe, probably the best-looking car they ever owned. After running over 80,000 miles on it they bought a ’75 Town Car sedan, brown with gold velour interior. The ‘good’ dashboard was still there, until ’77 or ’78 it remained. That was a supreme long-distance car. My much-older brother bought a ’75 Couple de Ville a couple years later and we compared them. The Coupe was a better handler overall though the Continental had amazing cornering power. The Continental though felt much better-built, the Caddy having the sort of loose fit and finish that seemed a problem since the ’71 models, which is what caused my uncle to switch. At about the same time, another older brother bought a ’76 New Yorker Brougham, essentially a rebadged Imperial after Chrysler dropped the moniker. Occasionally jarring torsion bar ride, okay build quality, best handler and strongest feeling engine of the bunch.
Of them all, give me a ’71 Continental, the last year before smog regulations began to really cut back the power on the 460 engine. That unfortunate ’79 depicted could only have a 400.
This sure is a beautiful example of this generation of Town Car. The first thing I thought of was the black 1977 Town Car from Schitt’s Creek. It was the perfect vehicle for the riches-to-rags situation they were in!
Pfft.. that Lincoln (pictured) doesn’t even have the Turbine Wheels.
😉
I think the popular contrarian opinion of black interiors being cliche boring or even ugly is countered effectively by this. First of all this opinion has formed with modern cars largely having stark dark interiors, but dark isn’t black and when you compare this interior(literally take a piece from one or other and put side by side) to a modern “black” interior in a Toyota et al, the new one will be more dark grey than actually black. Additionally the textures materials and even the woodgrain that really haven’t existed since this time )for better or worse) do their job to make it pop just as any other color interior would.
Furthermore I’d largely argue the iconic 61 Continental has tends to be most popularly favored in black on black as well, not that I agree with it but it is what it is; A big black on black Lincoln just has presence.
For me these are interesting dinosaurs, I never remembered literally any around even being being born a mere decade after their end(now a days 19 year old+ cars are as common or more as new!). I’m a generation younger where the Continental/towncar of my life was primarily the 90+ but I also remember through much of my childhood the late 80s ones were still very very common, and the styling ancestry of those were clearly spun off these 70s ones down to the turbine wheels, so while the sheer size was excessive its traits did seem to fit the brand perfectly as even now I see them as kind of the ideal Lincoln design language, and yes more so than the 61 which I ultimately think was an anomaly in critical acceptance.
Much like a 1971 thru 1976 Cadillac De Ville/Fleetwood: A better car to ride in the back seat of then pilot thru urban traffic.
I have vague memories of some kind of fuel economy run in about 1978 or ’79, maybe from “Car and Driver” magazine where someone, maybe Brock Yates, entered a 1979 Lincoln Continental in a fuel economy test. The ’79 Continental was the largest regular (non-limousine or non-modified) standard production automobile offered for sale in the U.S. at that time. It got appallingly low gas mileage, but it not bad enough for the testers who then reran the course, but this time with all the windows rolled down and the air conditioning running full blast, and the car predictably got even worse gas mileage.