1968 has gone down in history as a revolutionary year; change was in the air. Lee Iaccoca must have been breathing it in deeply because his decision to slap a faux Rolls Royce grille on the front of this car really did create a revolution, just not the one many of the would-be revolutionaries of 1968 had in mind.
The clean and graceful 1961 Continental ushered in a brief era of restrained grace and exclusivity. Although it saved Lincoln’s bacon, it really wasn’t a significant commercial success, and Cadillac outsold it by a giant margin. Why? It may have appealed to the Kennedys and the elite, but it wasn’t gaudy enough for the common man to relate to and strive for. As such, it was the last truly original American luxury car of its kind (full story here).
This was the true aspirational vehicle of the huddled masses, and ever more of them were able to afford one. And who better than Lee Iaccoca to figure out how to trump even Cadillac, especially after his spectacular success in trumping GM with his 1965 Mustang?
Even more important than the Mustang, Iaccoca also trumped GM by launching the Great Brougham Epoch with his 1965 Ford LTD. And what car did he have the balls to compare it too in the ads? A foreshadowing of things to come.
But before we give Lido too much credit for launching the whole upright classical-grille era, let’s consider one very obvious source of its inspiration. The 1966 Duesenberg revival was penned by Virgil Exner, as a direct development of his seminal 1963 drawings of the Stutz Revival that launched the whole neo-classic movement.
Henry Ford II saw the Duesenberg Model D at the Exner Studios in 1966, and was reportedly very smitten. So as much as I’d like to give credit to Lee and his designers, let’s also give credit to Virgil Exner as the true father of the Neo-Classic Era of the Great Brougham Epoch.
Of course, inspiration is one thing; deciding to actually build the Mark III with its RR-ish grille and Continental spare tire hump is another. So according to the old saying, Iaccoca gets 99% of the credit for his perspiration.
That’s the ninety second Mark III genesis story. Of course there’s more, primarily the fact that an über-Thunderbird, something to bridge between Mercury and Lincoln, priced accordingly, had been in the works for a while. With the T-Bird moving to a new perimeter frame structure for 1967, including an extended 117.2″ wb four-door version, it certainly made more sense than ever. The separate frame allowed more flexibility in creating a coupe body on the longer frame, similar to what Pontiac did with the 1969 Grand Prix.
This facilitated the longest hood yet ever, over six feet in length. And according to the orthodox story, it was fairly late in the game that Iaccoca had his “inspiration” to stick the Roller grille and tire hump in back, which hardly enthused Styling Chief Gene Bordinat. But once Henry II got wind of it, he was all over it. And the price was jacked up to well above mere Lincolns. And most importantly, it was dubbed the Mark III, as the 1958 incarnation of that name was deemed to be a pretender to the legacy of a true Continental Mark.
The Mark III arrived in the spring of 1968, to give battle to Cadillac’s FWD Eldorado coupe, which had arrived to great fanfare in 1967. Ironically, there’s undoubtedly some ’61 Continental influence in the Eldorado’s design; not blatant, but bladed fenders, slab sides, and a hunkered-down stance pays some tribute to the Conti’s lasting legacy. As appealing as it was on many levels, the Eldorado did not point the way forward to the new era of luxury design; only a fake upright grille could do that.
The arrival of the Mk III set up an epic battle of the luxo-coupes; guess who won? Well, technically, the Mark III couldn’t quite best the Eldorado in sales, but the fact that it even came close was a huge victory for Lincoln, Lee and Ford. And whereas the Eldorado didn’t really expand Cadillac sales overall, the Mark III gave the Lincoln brand an enormous boost, selling at some 50% of the level of the Continental sedan and coupe, despite being priced substantially higher. It had great resale value, too, an area where Lincoln had still been lagging behind. For the first time in decades, Lincoln had a genuine hit, and an extremely profitable one. And the Mark III led to Lincoln’s great successes in the seventies (and sometimes beyond). Just the kind of revolution Lincoln had long needed.
The Mark III’s interior was intended to create a luxury ambiance a notch above lesser Lincolns, although the decision to use plasti-wood on the doors and dash didn’t exactly go the distance. The door panels and dash did receive gen-u-ine strips of wood veneer with the 1969 models, perhaps to justify the Mark III’s price increases, but whether the dash and general interior design managed to evoke an authentic luxury car experience undoubtedly depends on what one’s previous experience was. Coming from an LTD, it probably looked like a slight upgrade. For someone used to a Benz or Jag, it looked just like an LTD. Which pretty much sums up this car in a nutshell: aspirational for LTD and Pinto drivers, but not for those already used to something finer.
And that encapsulates the genius of Lee Iaccoca and his Mark III. Forget about that title of “The Father of the Mustang”. The Mark III is by far his greatest achievement (Mark IV and its daddy shown here), and the one he never stopped trying to replicate until he was dragged out of Chrysler strapped to the sleek hood of a cab-forward LH. He never underestimated Americans’ ability to fall for a bold, vertical grille, a long hood, a formal roof-line with lots of vinyl (preferably with opera windows), fake wood slathered on the inside and outside, and spare tire humps; in some aggregation or another. America’s Super Salesman.
Once again Lee trumped GM, and the Mark III and its illustrious successors became the progenitors of how American luxury cars came to be defined in the seventies.
We don’t need to go down that well-trod path again; the Pimp-mobile Era was one of the more significant ones of the Great Brougham Epoch. And The Mark III was the gateway drug to that splendiferous time some of us had the fortune to live through in living Technicolor. Thank you Lee, for showing us the way forward! The seventies were all about getting in touch with our true inner selves, and so many did thanks to your prophetic Mark III!
Enough with popular culture. The Mark III has become quite elusive on the streets, but there’s this one still being used as a daily driver. Here it is hauling the shopping.
I also shot this one being hauled on a trailer pulled by a vintage Dodge pickup.
There’s also this fine shot posted at the Cohort by ActuallyMike. This long shot shows it artfully parked between a Mercedes W126 and a New Beetle. Nice composition.
Both of us took shots of the sensor for the automatic headlight dimming system. High tech from the sixties looks mighty crude today.
Under the Mark’s fashion-setting exterior, there were some very legitimate technical creds for the time. The new 460 cubic inch “385” engine was as good as it got, and belted out a healthy 365 (gross) hp. Front disc brakes were standard (unlike the ’67 Eldorado). And perhaps most importantly, no less than 150 lbs of sound deadener was placed strategically. The result was the perfect isolation cocoon, which the seventies of course gave rise to.
Who wants to see (or hear) all the ugly shit going down on the streets out there? Or be seen traversing them? Right on!… the Mark.
(a new and revised version of an old post)
Related CC reading:
Curbside Recycling: 1970 Lincoln Continental Mark III – Snow Angel (Of Death) by J. Klein
Curbside Classic / Cars of my Father: 1970 Lincoln Continental Mark III by JP Cavanaugh
Vintage M/T Review: 1970 Cadillac Eldorado Vs. Lincoln Continental Mark III – “Take Me To Beverly Hills” by A. Severson
COAL: 1970 Lincoln Continental Mark III – The Plot Twist by Tom Halter
Lehmann-Peterson Four-Door 1970 Lincoln Continental Mark III
I was 7 at the time when a neighbor was driving home his brand new 1970 Mark III. In fact, he’d just left the dealer in his tobacco brown ultra luxury coupe. He’d turned on to our street just as the hail began-golf ball sized at that. That car never stood a chance! I remember he just parked by the curb in front of the next door neighbor’s house. I often wondered why he didn’t just drive to his own home, about three houses down. Maybe he didn’t want to hear his nagging wife!
I remember clearly that weekend when dad was talking with him about his misfortune. He told my dad it was totaled-with 18 miles on it.
As for my beloved 1976 Mark, it has been bought by a genuine collector who claims he will bring it back to original.
My Dad’s new 1978 Mark V Cartier Edition was in the driveway rather than the garage when a quick hailstorm came through – it completely shredded the heavily padded vinyl roof, among other damage but after several weeks in the shop it came back in good shape. One winter he turned on the rear window defroster on a subzero evening and the window shattered into a thousand pieces over the rear seat. The vacuum operated headlight doors were repaired many times. Not the best of times for automobile quality. But with the 460 it was a nice highway cruiser and later on he and his lady friend enjoyed many post-retirement road trips in the car.
As one who got to experience a new one as a kid, this car really felt like luxury in 1969-70. The doors were extremely heavy and closed with a most satisfying feel and sound. The interior was as silent as it was possible to get at the time, undoubtedly helped by the Michelin X radial tires that were (I believe) standard equipment by 1970.
The interiors can be criticized, certainly in comparison to cars from 5 years earlier, but they were leagues better than anything in a Cadillac or Chrysler showroom of 1969.
I think Iacocca had a brilliant sense of what would and what would not sell. The Continental Mark II had been a fine car in that prewar, patrician sense – and it was a financial sinkhole. Iacocca grew up in a working class area and had a much more practical sense of what a luxury car should be. And, this being America, the idea was that the buyer drives the car for 2 or 3 years then trades on a new one. Sadly, the engineering and deep-down durability of cars built under his stewardship (at both Ford and Chrysler) displayed this vision.
Although a certified member of The GREAT AMERICAN LAND YACHT SOCIETY and preferring those Baroque beauties, I must admit that Lee did a lot for Ford and later Chrysler, BEFORE IACOCA Went LOCA with his Kcars, even stretching them to the Kcar based Executive Limo. He certainly hit the MARK with these, while IMO missing it with the 61 Downsized Continental. Having added my two cents, I’m on to VERSAILLES 😉 in my Town Car (2007 Signature Limited) the last gasp of traditional American Luxury.
The Executive Limo was far from the most “loca” of K-cars, being a handbuilt low-volume (meaning, done on the cheap in terms of development and tooling costs if not a per-unit basis), possibly even outsourced build. It was made mainly to get people talking about Iacocca and Chrysler, much like the convertibles. The main attraction coming in those years, a high-volume/high-margin Greatest Hit, was the T115 minivans.
The true moment when Lido was past it came at the launch of the Dodge Dynasty and its’ Chrysler C-body platform-mates with styling 10 years out of date the day Job 1 rolled off the line. Iacocca gambled there were people (like him) not ready to let go of the Brougham Era. He was right, of course, but could’ve been just as right with a few tweaks to the old M-body alongside a more progressive C-body with on-trend late ’80s aero styling. Instead, the senior Fifth Avenue flopped compared to its’ M predecessor, the Imperial revival sold only to the most hardcore of Mopar loyalists and they all were fleet queens by halfway through the product cycle.
+1. No denying the Mark whoop-de-do was an Iaccoca hit but the Chrysler minivan was an even bigger hit.
The Mark changed Lincoln. The minivan changed the industry.
Ford was considering increasing the displacement of the 460 to over 500 cubic inches for Lincolns. See what a Mark III can do with 500 cubic inches.
Going to a meeting at UCLA a few years ago I hastily managed to get some not very good shots of this pristine Mark III – truly a “baby blue Continental.” A beautiful car though I prefer the darker colors on the Mark III, my favorite of the series.
Didn’t fully get the car until I saw one a few years ago at Vanguard’s warehouse in Plymouth, MI a few years ago. The first thing that caught my eye were those wheelhouses. Wow. And the dark green car was stunning inside and out.
Could it be argued that the great brougham epoch began with the ’62 T-Bird Landau? The ’65 LTD had as plain a front end.