It wasn’t the stainless steel body (by Allegheny Ludlum) that caught my eye, nor the attractive young woman, but that terrible convertible top that has a nasty fold or something right behind the rear door and looks like its sagging between the bows. Is it a cheap aftermarket top bout at JC Whitney? How could the photographer not notice that fold? It boggles the mind…
It would have been better to have the model stand in front of the C pillar and smile pretty from there. A good photographer makes the best out of what they have to work with.
Or, you know, put the top down. Assuming it worked, that is.
The model’s clothing doesn’t suggest a top down day, otherwise I’d agree with you.
Wait, are we still talking about the car? 🤔
More recent photo.
Wow, that shows it much better.
I’m going to go out on a limb and propose that this was probably an unavoidable design flaw. A quick search on BaT of previous Continental convertible listings shows a majority with various degrees of really janky tops regardless of their overall condition, if photos of the top up were included at all. Even excellent ones have ill-fitting roofs; this was one of the best after a brief browse, on a $128k car:
Jay Leno spent half the show on his going on about how complex the top mechanism is. IIRC, there’s now one guy in the country who does nothing but fix them to work properly. The trunk lid opens backwards to receive the top.
Stainless steel is really too soft to use for a car body. I put a brushed SS backsplash behind our range in the 80s and then messed up the finish trying to clean it. But that didn’t stop me from getting a double-drainboard SS sink/counter in 2000, the third best thing I did after the push-button door lock and raised counters.
Ralph L,
Just as there are different levels of hardness [the Rockwell scale] in mild steel, stainless has it’s own hardness levels, depending on it’s blending of other metals. Plus, I’ve actually seen kitchen backsplash 4 X 4 inch tiles that are mostly plastic, with a ultra-thin layer of stainless glued onto the plastic. Using scouring powders or Brillo pads will quickly destroy those panels.
It’s well known that the stainless steel used to construct the Ford and Lincoln cars was robust enough to cause the stamping dies to rapidly deform after pressing only a few examples of each part. Depending on the actual metallurgy mixtures, it’s possible to end up with aluminum panels that can replace mild steel in car bodies. The primary problem is the much higher cost of the sheet panels, when compared to the steel, making it far too expensive.
Must be the Green Acres continental. Very difficult to find competent repair shops in Hooterville. Just ask Oliver, LOL!
Not a metallurgist, but my impressions of stainless, and yes, I’m aware there are an assortment of different alloys, is that stainless is hard and brittle. And abrasive, it doesn’t particularly like to be drilled or machined.
Nice stuff when you need the anti corrosive feature, but less than optimum the rest of the time.
Most convertible tops are fastened to the body down into the top well, so when the top is up it pulls that area tight. These are very different, and the top sits on and somehow seals to the horizontal surface panels, so there are no forces to stretch or pull the creases out. I would love to look at one of these up close to see how they seal to the body.
But yeah, that looks bad.
I had a ’63 Connie convertible for about 5 years in the early ’00s, that had a replacement top. As I recall, the fit was okay in that lower corner. The top frame is quite robust and I don’t see any reason why it shouldn’t fit tightly if done right.
I think the fitment of the top on these cars in general has to do with the quality of the top material and how well the installation was done. Assuming the top is of good quality, no doubt installing it is a somewhat difficult and time consuming task to get it right.
The top seals against the body with a wide and thick rubber gasket, along with a fixed panel that is attached to the top frame that replaces the folding deck flap when the top is up. Here’s a link to one of several Youtube videos that show this in good detail, and it has a very well fitting top (it’s a ’65 but the 66-67s use the same top/top mechanism): [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QFjs0vaqlM&w=560&h=315%5D
A 1966 Continental convertible. Not sure why this stainless steel car would need door edge guards as there is no paint to chip.
Not a 67 but a 66 66 had the Lincoln star on the front fender 67s didn’t
After a brief time designing and fabricating stainless-steel body panels, Robert “Allegheny” Ludlum took up the pen and achieved fame and fortune as a novelist.