Choose the pleasure of leather…
Or sumptuous velour. Either way, consider your retinas seared.
Brochure Outtake: 1981 Continental Mark VI – Might I Possibly Sear Your Retinas?
– Posted on June 8, 2018
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Curbside Classics Archives
I’d go for velour in a more restful shade – baby-blue if it was on offer, or golden tan if the blue interior was too dark.
Post-edit edit – Or green! I’d forgotten green interiors were ever a thing…
The biggest issue with these everything-not-chrome-or-woodgrain-is-red red interiors isn’t the bordello effect, it’s that the fabrics, leather, vinyls and hard plastics all *don’t quite* match when new and all fade in different ways at different rates when the car ages. For some reason, both of those were worse with red than any other color.
I want a pair of those (six way, eight way?) leather power seats for my man cave….
If Bordello Red isn’t appropriate in a man cave, where is it appropriate?
Oh wait. I think I just answered my own question…
In Nevada, at the Alien Service Plaza,on the road to Las Vegas, is a place in need of these seats. Agree?
Click on the Pic to make it upright, is that a pun?
These seats are a delight to my eyes and my BMW laden butt!! you dont see these kinds of luxury anymore. not even on a Rolls.
Gives a whole new meaning to the term “Red Light District.”
Suddenly Bordeaux Red becomes Brothel Red
I had a 77 town car in exactly that shade, over a black exterior…. Beautiful car, and very relaxing to be in… The red overload really is nice in person… But you know… Taste is subjective… I just wish they still offered a few ‘wild’ interor colors, rather than grey black or tan…
Red interiors… young PRNDL approved!
’63 Impala?
Yes.
Purchased by my dad in ‘66 and driven until the summer of ‘70 when it was t-boned on the passenger side by a ‘68 Impala or Caprice wagon.
I owned a ’77 LeBaron coupe with leather interior in pretty much the same color. It could be a bit off-putting, especially when driving early in the morning or at dusk, when the sun was low in the sky, as when bright sunlight came in at a direct angle the reflection off the gloss of the leather and other shiny red surfaces would give the whole interior a very red glow. Kinda looked like a scene out of Repo Man. Not a good look.
Repo Man is a fun film by the way, used to have it on VHS.
If you want bland and blahhhhhhhhh you should choose a new Camry-Accord-Altima over this car.
The Camry comes with a red interior.
Don’t get me wrong, I love red interiors, but I think with examples such as the 2018 Camry, where the seats and a small amount of dash are red with the rest being black is enough. 100% red is just a bit too much.
Too much? Anything worth doing is worth doing to excess. Check out this red Nissan prototype currently on display in Nissan’s Ginza Tokyo showroom. Sorry I didn’t get the interior.
I’ve walked thru the local Toyota new car storage area several times, with various friends looking for a new car, do NOT ever recall seeing this interior!
Most unusual.
I did see too much black, gray and a very occasional “bisque” colored interior.
Did they have to wake you when it was time to go home?
It’s currently highlighted on the very popular television show “Modern Family”
I would guess it would be pretty difficult to get your hands on one of those. You can’t order a Toyota from the factory and most dealers aren’t going to stock something like that, especially on a Camry. Though if you did manage to snag one, you’d have a rare version of a common car – future CC material for sure!
The local Toyota store has 4 XSE V6s; 3 have the red interior. Any dealer that stocks XSEs probably took several in red.
This was hideous when it was new, and hasn’t improved with age.
The inside is fine. It is the outside of these cars that damages my eyes.
LOL – right!
Both are equally repulsive to me.
Quite a slate of choices:
So it looks like they offered Light Fawn and Medium Fawn. I guess the difference is “I really think that is an attractive interior you have there, it looks so good with your outfit” and “Wow, how fabulous that interior looks with that outfit, which is also fabulous. I mean really!”
I don’t think I could take Heavy Fawn – that would just be too much. 🙂
Perhaps we could interest you in “Touch of Fawn” or “Fawn Essence?” 😉
No “Bambi’s Mother” interior? 🙂
Well, yes Mr Cavanaugh, but only if said customer had worn their couch to the showroom, surely? (A mistake doubtless possible, if one was rushed, in the ’70’s).
Soooooo… what color is Vaquero?
It’s a weird Orangish-Red-Brown color.
(Shudder) 😉
I believe that Ford had so much profit in these cars that it was worthwhile for them to offer very broad choices to attract as many customers as possible. Thus all the possible colors. We are seeing the same thing today with pickups – not so many color choices but all sorts of interior trim options.
It isn’t the profit margin that allows a generous selection. The selection has the purpose of *chasing* extra money that’s on the table by inventing more elaborate options. Compared to high end sports cars and sedans, a perfectly good pickup truck is cheap; when a prospect is switched to a truck, and theallenge is to create as many more plausible options and features as possible to collect as much of that larger available sum of money as possible.
Hmm. Needs more red.
We had an ’89 LeSabre with red leather that was a shade darker than that Lincoln. I still think it was pretty cool.
I’d take it over gray or beige any day.
It’s loud, sure, but I have to smile when the 80s could produce not only an interior like this, but also a clubby Jaguar or stark but quality Mercedes. Gotta love variety.
I just remembered this Cadillac ATS interior from a couple years ago. I like it!
Whichever Mark VI red interior is chosen, this factory option is a must…
Don’t forget the aftermarket Continental spare to go on your Continental trunklid.
i remember seeing those coach lamps and thinking “what the hell was Ford thinking?”
They remind me of someone wearing a nice suit and wearing Coke bottle glasses.
Given how cost-conscious Ford was, I can only wonder why they didn’t get to this look using single 6″ sealed beams and fixed filler panels.
I know it’s meant to be a joke, but after all the dark gray in today’s interiors, I find an all red interior to be a nice change. And no, I don’t mean a gray dashboard with red inserts on door panels and seats, more along the lines of something all red.
I think I prefer this. Most interiors are black. No options in colors anymore.
Thus making cars even more appliance-like.
I’d even settle for going back to the days where the interior could be ordered in any colour, even green! ( And I hate green)
And colour co ordinated seat belts could be purchased as an extra cost option if you really wanted your interior to shine
I wouldn’t mind a red leather interior. I think it looks cool on certain cars, the Mark VI however, is not such a car.
The second is what Clarkson would (correctly) call “vulgalour”.
I had a ’83 T-Bird Heritage Coupe in Red Metallic with Red Leather Interior. Loved that car… much more character to that interior then the Gray/Beige/Black choices today.
Had a ’91 LX in Red Metallic with Red Cloth/Leather interior too, but the ’83 had much more eye appeal.
The POS Zephyr had a red interior {{{shudder}}}
I wouldn’t care what color those seats were, but I do like red, they are some of the best in the modern age. 250 miles is a piece of cake sitting in them.
Even the Mini came in red.
The ‘cyclops’ Speedo gauge made it easy to configure these as either RHD or LHD.
The interior of my GTO was red to match the exterior. Sounds like the Mark 6 was a trendsetter…
It is very beautiful. I have the same interior in blueish green velour in my car. I love it. It’s so comfortable
I loved it, specially that velvet. Would be funny to see the reaction of an European designer after seeing it.
This is the perfect car interior for me, particularly the second one in velour. I had a P6 LTD with an interior very similar to this – deep buttoned red velour seats, red leather (or possibly vinyl) door trims and centre console, an ideal mix. I miss that car.
The Medici cloth interiors in 70’s Cadillacs are another thing I wish a modern manufacturer would emulate today, again particularly in a nice bordello red
With seats like those, Charles Lindbergh would have never made it across the Atlantic.
Time passes fast, no? At the relevant time, when a smartarsed teen, I laughed at such interiors as a joke of immense bad taste.
I didn’t forsee the grey seriousness that would come to define the meaning of “interior”, and didn’t know that any suggestion of a variation thereon would be condemned as unsaleable. So now, this nonsense stands out as lively, and thus I like it.
For all of us giggling at American tastes, I do invite you to remember any upscale Opel interior from this time. These cars were effective and 90% equal BMW or even Merc competitors, stymied only by the badge. But the interiors! They’re no better than this. We got them in Oz as Holdens (with mos def NOT BM-standard engines). Hopefully, an Oz reader can here upload a photo of a ’79 Commodore SL/E interior, in standard velour, in red. It’s hardly good taste, but it is fun. A fun now gone.
Fade to grey.
Had a look around a friends Commodores this week, a VH four manual with velour seats beige though, and their other Commodore a VN GTS 3.8 auto neither car was available in Australia. Cloth interior in the VN.
Yes the GTS is a genuine factory edition not a fake
Bless you for not calling it a Lincoln. The brand was Continental.
Continental wasn’t a separate brand anymore after 1956. It was just a model of the Lincoln brand. Like Monte Carlo or Corvette wasn’t a brand; it was a model of the Chevrolet brand.
This is legally and technically a Lincoln Continental Mark VI.
This sears my retinas:
Bill Mitchell was probably quite a card. Anyone who could wear that with a straight face would have to be. Hahahaha!!!
Well, my retina has already been seared from two vitrectomies and two laser procedures, so I don’t need any more of that – it’s still healing, too.
However, I have always loved red interiors, just as long as the car wasn’t black on the outside.
Interiors used to be matched to paint colour I recall several Holdens my dad bought new with red and blue vinyl interiors matched to the exterior sticky hot seats are seared into my memory banks make mine cloth or velour please leather is not a luxury item in cars.
They’re not seared into my memory banks, those vinyl horrors, but my arse.
And yes, perhaps an entire CC post could be raised about leather. I too reckon it’s not a luxury as a car seat, yet it’s now not not available on anything remotely posh.
I like it. A change from the drab interiors of current cars.
Wow, was that the Larry Flynt Designer Edition?
My father had a 1975 Chrysler in beige with an interior to match the colour if not the material of the “sumptuous velour” example above. Not the only unusual thing about that car, as it was Chrysler 2 Litre anyway…..
I can’t say much with any certainty towards car lines, but most pickup interiors dropped their colors in the mid-’90s. 1998 was the last year of colored interiors in the F-150/250 line. Beyond gray and tan, XL and XLT had the options of Willow Green and Cordovan cloth with matching carpet and plastic all around (only with certain coordinated exterior colors). Willow Green was also available in 1997-98 Expeditions. Grandpa had Willow green in his ’97 Teal XLT, but I’ve never seen a Cordovan F-150.