In 1975, Lincoln offered the Continental Mark IV in 21 different colors, from Pastel Blue to Moondust Metallic Gold. Yet, almost 28 percent of buyers chose white, often in a white-on-white combo promoted in Lincoln-Mercury advertising. Here’s how Lincoln briefly made white a big hit in the mid ’70s — a far more colorful automotive era than our own.
Does it seem like every other late-model car on the road is white or silver? That’s no illusion: About 80 percent of new passenger cars and trucks are what the industry sometimes calls “achromatic colors” — silver, gray, black, and white. White is the most popular car color in much of the world. According to Axalta, which has tracked OEM color popularity since the 1950s, white has been Number 1 in North America since 2007.
Back in the ’70s, most cars and many trucks offered a much broader, more diverse array of color choices. Ford typically offered 40 to 50 colors line-wide, almost half of which were available on the Lincoln Continental Mark series and Ford Thunderbird.
Even then, some people preferred white. According to Marti Report data, nearly 20 percent of 1972 Mark IV production was white, falling to 14.6 percent for 1973 and 13.3 percent for 1974.
Elvis Presley owned two white Mark IVs, a 1972 and a 1975.
For 1975, Lincoln-Mercury actually went out of its way to promote white for the Mark IV. The above ad ran on the back cover of the January 1975 Motor Trend. The body copy reads:
To add color to your life, a white-on-white Mark IV for 1975. A white landau roof on a white body. Aluminum wheels. Wide band white sidewall tires. White premium body side molding. And lipstick red detail in its interior. A combination of five luxury options at additional cost. In a Mark IV, a little color can go a long way.
The lipstick red interior accents were part of the available Lipstick and White Luxury Group option. However, the ad doesn’t call out that package by name, and it’s only one of the five luxury options needed to “build” the car shown in the ad.
Here’s a 1975 Mark IV with four of those five options, lacking only the wide-band whitewalls, which I understand have become rather pricey. (Diamond Back has modern replicas, but they run about $300 a tire.)
The forged aluminum wheels were a $286.70 option in 1975. Lincoln-Mercury said they were about 10 percent lighter than steel wheels, improving ride (a little) through reduced unsprung weight.
The Raleigh Classic listing didn’t have a good shot of the premium body side moldings, but here’s a closeup from another white 1975 Mark IV with the same color option. These fancy filigreed vinyl moldings were a $129.40 option.
A “Normande grain” full-length vinyl roof was standard on the Mark IV, in your choice of 13 colors, but the Landau-style half-roof shown in the ad was a hefty $500.00 extra. (This picture is also of a different car with the same exterior treatment.)
I’ve talked about the Lipstick and White Luxury Group option before, but it’s always worth another look. It listed for $465.40 in 1975 (not $400, as I had previously reported) and combined white leather upholstery with a red dashboard and matching carpeting, plus Lipstick Red accents on the seats, doors, and rear quarter panels. (This car’s red seat belts appear to have been borrowed from a 1976 model — the 1975 Lipstick and White option came with white seat belts, matching the retractors.)
You didn’t have to order that package if you wanted a “triple-white” car. White upholstery could also be combined with eight other interior colors, including Black, Blue, Green, Gold, Saddle, Tan, and Taupe.
Interestingly, buyers who liked the idea of a white-and-red interior but thought the Lipstick Red accents were a little too gaudy could also order plain white leather with a Dark Red dash and carpeting.
Doing that also cost less than half as much as ordering the Luxury Group option.
The Lipstick and White option turned out to have been a lot more popular than I had previously been led to believe: It was ordered by 5,945 Mark IV buyers in 1975. I think we can reasonably assume that all of those buyers ordered this option because they liked the red accents — there was surprisingly little hard sell, at least at the factory merchandising level.
Unlike some of the other Luxury Group options, the Lipstick and White Luxury Group DIDN’T feature special white paint, just the regular old Code 9D White. So, while Lincoln-Mercury was obviously hoping people would order all the other recommended options (which would add around $1,400 to the bottom line and considerable profit to the Ford coffers), you really didn’t have to.
This was an interesting low-key marketing strategy — using the mildly gaudy Luxury Group option to draw extra attention to one of the Mark’s least-exceptional color selections by making it seem like part of a fashionable new special package. It sounds a little hokey, but as the following table shows, it worked:
| Exterior Color | 1972 | 1973 | 1974 | 1975 | 1976 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| White | 9,495 | 10,171 | 7,636 | 13,104 | 7,697 |
| Other Colors | 39,096 | 59,266 | 49,680 | 34,041 | 48,413 |
| Total | 48,591 | 69,437 | 57,316 | 47,145 | 56,110 |
| % White | 19.5% | 14.6% | 13.3% | 27.8% | 13.7% |
For 1975, 27.8 percent of new Marks were ordered in white, about double the previous year’s percentage — and roughly twice the overall popularity of white on all new 1975 U.S. cars.
Since this bump was short-lived (for 1976, the percentage of Mark IV production ordered in white dropped back to a more customary 13.7 percent), I think the big marketing push in 1975 had a lot to do with the surge in white Marks.
Modern color trend trackers like Axalta or the German company BASF (which compiles its own color trend reports) tend to talk about shifting automotive color preferences in highly superstitious terms. The 2024 BASF report, for example, is full of glue-huffing hooey, like an assertion that very slight recent increases in the popularity of pastel tones “resonate with themes of AI-human harmony and sustainability.” (I almost choked on my drink.)
It’s true that color trends can be complicated, since they’re often influenced by what people are seeing in other areas of fashion, design, and culture around the same time. However, a lot of it just comes down to which colors manufacturers decide to offer and which ones they deign to promote. Pushing specific colors is easier for already-popular fashion-driven high-end products like the Continental Mark (which cost the equivalent of $80,000 to $90,000 in 2026 terms), but it is certainly possible with cheaper cars — remember how in the early 1990s, practically every third car on the road was blue-green or teal?
Judging by the blather in the Axalta and BASF reports about the “vibrant” and “captivating” “depth and sophistication” of gray tones, it unfortunately doesn’t seem like we can look forward to any major resurgence of “chromatic” auto colors any time soon.
However, the success of the white-on-white Mark IV is a reminder that these trends are the result of deliberate marketing decisions, not some immutable law or mysterious cosmic forces. Who knows, maybe one day all the global color consultants and starry-eyed mystics who are apparently shaping those decisions will once again decide that “the new black” is something other than white, silver, or gray!
Related Reading
Automotive History: 1972 Lincoln Continental Mark IV – Bunkie Knudsen Leaves His Mark (by me)
Curbside Classic: 1972 Lincoln Continental Mark IV – About Fathers, Sons and Cars (by J P Cavanaugh)
Curbside Classic: 1976 Continental Mark IV Givenchy Edition – Aqua Couture (by Tom Klockau)
Classic Curbside Classic: 1976 Lincoln Continental Mark IV – Gas Fed Beef (by Richard Bennett)
COAL: 1976 Lincoln Mark IV Jade/White Luxury Group — A Very Special COAL (by Chip Downs)
You don’t have to be a fan of white car paint to agree that the Feature Lincoln looks fantastic in this color. Though personally, I would have preferred a white car with a navy blue interior.
As for the ongoing “trend” (or is it a dictate?) toward achromatic paint finishes, I think the industry is quite happy with it. With a bit of titanium dioxide, cheap carbon pigments, and a few metallic flakes, the entire achromatic “color” spectrum can be achieved. The few actual color pigments needed to fine-tune the look can be disregarded.
In contrast, it requires many expensive minerals to create “real” colors.
100%. Agree on all points.
Especially the beauty of this featured Lincoln. THAT is how you ‘enter a room’ (so to speak).
Both Lincoln and Cadillac were really good about providing lots and lots of color choices in the 1970’s. They offered many corporate-wide popular colors, but then went off with several exclusive colors you couldn’t get on your Pinto or Nova.
I remember the popularity of white interiors in the mid 70s, and will confess to a teenaged fetish for them myself. I liked it when manufacturers started offering other colors for the dash and carpet besides black.
I had not been aware that White was so popular on Marks in 1975. I remember the Lipstick package as being more frequently seen in advertising than in real life, though.
The Lipstick and White Luxury Group was ordered on 12.6 percent of 1975 production, so it was by no means rare — that’s about one car in eight.
Still, only about 6,000 cars. I wonder if they might have been seen more frequently in places that were not Fort Wayne, Indiana. 🙂
I wonder how many silver ones were sold because of this guy.
There are rumors that the Continental Mark IV inspired Volvo to create the 262 Coupé.
Not entirely far-fetched, considering the image shown below (although the 262C was never officially available in white from the factory).
Thank Color Marketing Group for the “INFLUENCE” of achromatic NON-COLOR by the ma$$e$! When I was a member, in long ago COLORFUL days, we would intently discuss varying shades of different COLORS, not blah grays. Money talk$ and influential Groups control the “thoughts” of the proles!! 🙂 DFO
PS: My WHITE Accord Touring; I only bought a white one because I had a used choice of it…or it!
I forgot to add that my first Accord Touring 2L was purchased new, and was a very nice Metallic Red (vs the metallic White of my ’21) plus had a visually complimentary, rather rich neutral (sand?) fabric interior whereas the ’21 has a blACK leather inrerior. In other words, given a CHOICE I will go with COLOR every time; well except for the 2 other metallic white cars I have owned out of 69 cars and suvs over the years. 🙂 DFO
Teddy Ramos had a 72 Mark in Ginger Bronze with a white vinyl roof, white leather and deep brown shag carpet….what a ride!
An interesting point is made with the period-accurate color take rates. Yes, people bought a lot of white and black; but even though they weren’t selling much green or red or beige, look how many different shades they offered!! There’s FIVE shades of green, FIVE of blue, several for a brownish/orange/gold part of the palette.
Not today.
“We make em in greyscale because that’s what people buy” should always be answered with “people can only buy what you’re making.”
This really brings back some good memories. I will start by confessing I am a retired Interior Designer and have always liked strong saturated vibrant colors, mostly used for accents, and red is my favorite color. It was 1975, I went car shopping with my good friend who would soon gift me a new 1976 Eldorado convertible, white w/red interior. He was trading his 1972 Mark IV that I really enjoyed driving and I was not so fond of the 1975 Mark IV (bumpers). However, on the new car lot I vividly remember seeing a white Mark IV w/white & lipstick red accented interior exactly like this feature car. Wow, it was beautiful! But it still had the massive bumpers. What I don’t remember is why he bought a new 1975 Imperial, in a red-burgundy, w/red-burgundy interior. In all honesty the Imperial was beautiful and turned out to be perhaps the most comfortable Interstate cruiser I ever drove, better than any Cadillac or Lincoln in the same period.
During my decades I have owned four white cars all bought new except for one I inherited: 1976 Eldo conv. w/red interior, 1997 Sebring LXI coupe (white upper / silver lower) w/gray interior, 1998 Riviera pearl white (inherited), 2011 Camaro 21LT w/gray & beige interior. Another favorite car color is Teal and I have owned a few. I have liked my white cars because they look crisp & clean even when covered in a little dust. Easy maintained and easy to touch up dreaded rock chips.
I once read somewhere that the color preference of the wealthy for their cars is predominantly white or black. While there would certainly be outliers who go with a much more individual shade, it sounds about right.
A typical tabloid report. It’s worthless as long as you don’t define what “the wealthy” means.
Not against you, Rudiger. Just against certain self-important scribblers in the media scene.
I factory ordered a Chevy pickup in late 1993. Look at the variety of colors available. Even back then it was heavy on acromatic colors. In the salesman book, it listed the sales percentage of colors the previous year. Not surprising 50 Summit White was just over 50% with 74 Victory Red a distant second for full-size trucks. Fleet orders naturally influenced the take rate for white trucks. There were also four interior colors offered, gray, blue, tan and red. I ordered my Work Truck special fleet model in white with a blue interior.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t another factor in the shift to achromatics the move away from custom ordering? If people don’t custom order, the odds of your preferred color among dozens being on a lot being in the desired trim are nearly nil, even at a huge dealer.
When I got my Volvo, factory ordering was impossible (or impossibly expensive as doing so disallowed nearly ten grand of incentives) and there were only two or three cars on the lot or en route in my target config, color aside. If Volvo had randomly chosen each color among two dozen polarizing options rather than gray and blue-black, the odds of finding one acceptable (if not compelling) would have been pretty slim.