Getting a bit vanned out? Here’s the ultimate van antidote, in terms of space utilization and a few other important aspects. William Rubano posted some nice shots of this big baby at the Cohort. But what caught my eye was the slanting eyelids. That does look a bit weird.
Obviously, the eyelids aren’t dropping down evenly on both sides. I wonder how hard it would be to fix that, a little cosmetic surgery. It would go along way from keeping this Lincoln looking a bit more proud than goofy.
Out of curiosity, I did a google search and found others with the same malady. This is not the same car, despite the similar paint.
No drooping issues back here, despite the massive overhang.
Ain’t that a beaut? I could look at that for hours. Driving? Not so much so given that most of my driving is either for short in-town errands or on backwoods roads. Just not the right car for that. Now a trip across Nebraska would be appealing.
Hey, it’s my Town Car’s Uncle Lou!
Love it.
Man I love the taillight setup & rear view on these.
1973 Lincoln Continental ad. All of these judges own the other luxury car (BIG SMILE)
Pure gold.
http://youtu.be/AJweE6ENWJU
That is some massive looking rear treatment, wow! Interesting car, nice shape. I like how it uses rubber fillers to hide the gap between the bumper guards and bumper, that’s the first time I’ve seen that done, good detailing.
I’ve seen a few of these with the crooked headlight trim as well. I believe that they’re held on by adhesives and that they seem to shift around a bit over the decades. I don’t want to start a brougham vs everything else fight but it got my 1979 town car when i was 24 2 yrs ago and was expecting some uncontrollable boat based on comments on the inter webs but the first time I drove it,I was perfectly at home. Granted I didn’t grow up with lotuses in the driveway, more like volvos, qx4’s cherokees and bonnevilles but I don’t see what all the fuss is about. As long as you’re smooth with your inputs and have decent tires (hankook 727s in my case)and all of the rubber and oily parts in the steering and suspension are in top shape it does whatever I ask of it. Its like my 300c but with lighter steering.
+1. My namesake is a much more pleasant highway car than my parents newish Edge. Mushy pedals “by wire” and steamroller tires, plus bad visibility? Give me firm pedals and overboosted 15s any day.
Sing it, C-body brother! 🙂
My favorite 70s Lincoln. Same color as Dad’s 72 Mark IV. The funny facial expression is new to me.
It doesn’t look like they are drooping as much as they aren’t down all the way on the inside. If you look at the bright trim strip at the bottom of the door it is fairly lined up with the corresponding trim on the fender cap while at the inside it is higher than the corresponding trim.
That’s exactly what I noticed (and said), in slightly different words.
This is just a guess, but I’m wondering if, in a cost-cutting move, instead of using two holes and mounting nuts, Ford decided to just use a single, center mounting hole and trim nut with 3M adhesive tape on the sides for the headlight trim.
Then, a half century later, the adhesive tape loses its adhesive properties and the headlight trim starts tilting.
The headlight covers are definitely out of alignment; they are slightly higher on the side
closest to the center grill and lower on the edges facing outward-it does look a bit incongruous.
Slant them the other way and they’d make it look like your average 2013 car 🙂
A beautiful example. Given how much the vertical grille became associated with Lincoln in the 70s, the grille doesn’t remind one of a Lincoln, when first viewed. It looks like it inspired the 1974 Chrysler Newport grill. As well as the 1979 R-Body Newport front clip.
Amongst many other interesting automotive facts I’ve learned, this website has demonstrated to me how much Chrysler seemed to play ‘follow the leader’ with regards to their styling throughout their history. I’ve seen many examples, especially from the 60s and 70s, where they used GM or Ford styling cues a model year or two later. Always playing catchup it seemed. It was shameless in a number of cases. Like they didn’t care if it was obvious, they just wanted to be competitive. It was nice to see, by the 90s especially, they started to break more styling ground. And to some degree, started to influence other manufacturers with their designs.
This was intentional. Chrysler broke new styling ground with the 1957 models, and was sensationally successful (at least from a styling standpoint). Then, they tried again in the early 1960s, and the results were disastrous. When new management took over in late 1961-early 1962, Lynn Townsend (an accountant) determined that styling leadership was a risky bet and that Chrysler would follow trends, not set them. This state of affairs hung on there, even into the Iacocca years. I would argue that it was Bob Lutz who put Chrysler back into a position of styling leadership in the 90s.
I can still remember the razzing I took when I showed up at a WPC Club summer picnic with my 1977 Gran Fury sedan. Things like “Get that Buick out of here”….
I always thought this front was a copy of the 1977-1979 Buick front end.
Indeed. It’s certainly not original to Chrysler. The grill pattern itself, is very close to this Lincoln.
I miss hidden headlights. not pop-up but true hidden ones. also fender skirts. wonder if anyone will do a 70s retro car ever? but then I think they should replace the Challenger with a Cordoba in the same idiom….
My Dad always had a lot of trouble (leaking vacuum lines, frozen doors, motor burn-outs) with the hidden headlight doors on his Mark V whereas the pop-ups on my 300ZX never gave me any problems. To be fair he was in the cold Midwest and I was in sunny SoCal. I doubt they’ll make another appearance given the advent of HIDs/LEDs.
Never a big fan of fender skirts other than the ones on my Dad’s 65 Thunderbird and a few other cars where they were integral to the fender design. I think I was prematurely damaged by the sight of the hideous skirted wheels of the Nashes, including a bathtub Ambassador, we had when I was a child.
Of course today they could implement hidden headlights using clear headlight covers with a layer of liquid crystal which could make the covers opaque. No moving parts!
I could only imagine fender skirts making a comeback in the name of aerodynamics. The first gen Honda Insight had them.
The headlight trim makes me think of Grouch Marx eyebrows, which works well for this car, because it could use a nice cigar too.
I’m a Cadillac guy, but I like this for some reason, its massive size is alluring, just sitting there taking up all that wall space. Its a full on dreadnaught. It’s so big you need to park it next to a building for scale.
“Although fading 70s starlet Marsha was happy enough with her nose and eye-lift, she couldn’t help but wonder if she ought to have had her ears lifted too.”
An old girlfriend had a Sebring convertible with hidden headlights. I recall having to use a hand crank to get the lids up when it had blown a fuse one night…so she could get back home to Old Whatsis Face.
I just have a soft spot for these big Lincolns, crooked trim and all. Kinda like a grand dame who used to be the belle of the ball but now can’t get her makeup on quite right. But no one can question her presence.
I’m not absolutely certain about this car, but I believe a lot of Ford headlight doors in this era used a vacuum system to operate the doors. When the vacuum would develop a leak, the doors would creep up when the car was shut off, and return to full closed when the car was started.
I’ve seen this cross eyed problem on many ’70 – ’74 Lincolns. I’m not sure if it’s just that the doors are slightly open, or if these are further screwed up and out of alignment. Dirt, grit, ice and snow could wreak havoc with these over time.
As I recall Ford’s system, these things are always under heavy spring pressure when closed, kept there by vacuum. This is why they open when the vacuum leaks away during long spells of sitting. My dad had a couple of cars with these, and I can recall being a curious kid and trying to manually push those headlight covers down – it was very hard to do, because those springs were pretty stout. It would not surprise me that there are some worn bushings or other mechanical parts from 40 years of fighting those big springs.
Not that Mopar’s electric system was foolproof, but when it quits, the doors will stay where you put them, unlike the FoMoCo vacuum eyelids.
The downside (at least with my 77 New Yorker) was that the electric doors were much less tolerant of ice buildup. Drive for awhile on a snowy night, then turn off the lights – those motors would howl and bark at you if they get hung up on an ice buildup. It was common to disconnect the power wire in the winter and just leave them open. However, when the car sat for awhile, the headlight covers would stay where you had last put them. Pluses and minuses to each one.
The Ford system was fool proof because of those springs, if something failed they defaulted to open so you could still use the headlights.
I used to do this to my mother’s Mark III Lincoln when it was parked in the back yard after it quit running for the last time.
Many years ago I noticed the headlight doors moving on a mid 70’s Grand Marquis as I slowly passed it on a 4-lane highway. We were both doing between 55 and 60 and his engine was pulling just enough vacuum to override the leaky vacuum circuit, cause both headlight doors to slowly cycle open and closed — it was the strangest sight seeing the car’s eyelids slowly oscillate like that.
The car did this for many miles as I kept my eye on it in my rearview mirror. The owner probably had no idea his car was doing this since the default mode is “open” and the covers would no doubt remain wide open when the lights were on.
More vans, please!
LOL…
It’s interesting on this car to see Ford’s approach to the 5 mph front bumper requirement compared to the ’73 Torino we saw here a few days ago. Ford plunged right in with its battering ram on the Torino.
This looks like the ’72 bumper slightly lowered and pulled out and possibly a flexible filler added to the gap. The chrome outline around the bumper edge that was popular on luxury cars in the late ’60s and early seventies remains, looking slightly awkward.
Here’s a ’72 for comparison. It also appears to have a mild case of the headlight door malady.
As far as I know, the ’73 Continental had the only front bumper that wasn’t the huge steel beam type seen on other Fords that year (including the Mark IV). Of course that changed for ’74 to meet the vertical height standards that began then, to make front and rear 5-mph bumpers more likely to strike each other.
Nor is the ’73 simply the ’72 bumper with filler panels; if it were, the rear edge of the side piece wouldn’t extend all the way back to the wheel opening. Also the vertical rubber-edged left and right pieces in front of the grille are taller and less delicate on the ’73; those on the ’72 tuck under. (We had a ’72, with optional Copper Moondust Metallic paint and the misaligned headlamp door appliqués even when new – but not the doors themselves too, as on the featured car.)
The 73 Pinto front bumper was the same as the 71-72 front bumper. They added an aluminum extrusion backing, a polyurethane filler panel instead of steel, and stuck it out a little bit more. .
That color combo is the same as what I had on my first car – a used 74 Ford Gran Torino.
Beige vinyl roof over “medium copper metallic” if I remember correctly.
Lookign at these cars, I always find it that odd Ford abandoned the true 4 door hardtop so much sooner than GM.
They did, and they didn’t. Lincoln was done with the style beginning with ’61 to more easily accommodate suicide doors. The “pillared hardtop” started to become Ford’s stock-in-trade with that year’s Continental. Cadillac’s Fleetwood joined the Continental as pillared hardtop only in ’65, and the style was also offered on high end Oldsmobiles and Buicks in ’65 – ’70.
The 4 door hardtop was what people wanted in its early days, and in ’56 and ’57 it was a very dominate style for brands like Buick and Olds. The reputation for wind and water leaks caused it to fade a bit, and with most manufacturers offering multiple car size platforms by the early ’60s – and non full size cars rarely offered the style – the sedan remained a very accepted part of the sales picture. The growing popularity of air conditioning and the need to accommodate better mounting points when shoulder belt regulations started to kick-in in ’69 further eroded the style.
Beginning in ’71 Ford offered full size Mercury and Ford four doors in traditional sedan (framed windows), pillared hardtop and true hardtop styles. The pillared hardtop began to dominate sales, and the traditional sedan was dropped from the full size line in ’73. The pillared hardtop was so popular, it spread to Ford’s mid size four door and wagon models in ’72 and the full size wagons were added in ’73. Ford and Mercury offered true four door hardtops through ’74, but the percentage of sales was so low they were quietly dropped with the minor ’75 facelift.
Ford was done after ’74, GM after ’76, and Chrysler after ’78.
I really like the true four door hardtop style, and made it a point to own one at one time – and it actually was quite weather tight even after it became my winter beater with damage from multiple accidents. Lincoln sales may have been a bit hampered by the pillar in the early ’70s, but after the ’75 facelift, four door Lincoln sales took off like a rocket.
This a gorgeous Lincoln, no doubt.
And I know it’s based upon the same platform as the LTD and Marquis.
But with this grill and front end, I find it could be confused with a Mercury, at least from a distance. IMO without the hallmark Lincoln vertical grill and trunk lid spare tire embellishment, a casual observer at the time, may not appreciate it being a Lincoln. Though you can see where the evolution has started, to achieving that wholly unique Lincoln identity fully established later in the 70s.
Beautiful car . Much better looking and better made than the sorry compact mk whatever junk they make now. It has everything the new ones lack. Size room and style. I do think the 77 to 79 front end is more majestic looking. But this car has style. And a 460. A real Lincoln.