1956 Continental Mark II at the Ford auto showroom of Carr’s Motor Sales in Austin, October 1955.
Photo by Dewey B. Mears, from the Texas History Project.
Further reading:
Curbside Classic: 1956 Continental Mark II – Caught In The Pincers
Forgotten Future: Alternate Designs For The Continental Mark II
These have long fascinated me, and I still hope to see one “in person” sometime. Images of the promotional roll-out are always interesting; here’s another dealer showroom (in NYC, I think—experts will know):
Maple Motors in Henderson, Tennessee had one for sale in 2022. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sPutoivYjbQ
I have always been fascinated that at $10,000, they lost money on every one sold.
A beautiful car that was lavished with so much care when built.
That’s $115K today (plus AC). This resulted in low production numbers for a vehicle with few if any shared parts of the body and interior. I’m guessing that GM also lost tons on their more innovative Cadillac response, and the Cadillac didn’t even stand apart from other Cadillacs although it was also unique. Everyone was at least aware of the Mark II (part of its purpose) but probably not the Cadillac.
With an MSRP of just over $13K, Cadillac lost between 3-4K on every Eldorado Brougham they sold. FoMoCo lost approx. $2K-2500. on each Mark II.
Question: Has this car ever appeared in a movie? It’s funny but I always enjoy car watching in old movies.
In quite a few, including “High Society” (image below).
The full list of them all is here:
https://www.imcdb.org/vehicles_make-Continental_model-Mark+II.html
“Pal Joey” With Loren Bacall and Frank Sinatra comes to mind! She owned a baby blue Mark II in the movie.
Also ‘Sweet Smell of Success’, bad, bad newspaper columnist Burt Lancaster’s chauffeur driven ride.
Not a movie, and the IMCDB misses this, but when I was watching my box set of The Six Million Dollar Man, I spotted what looks like a two-tone example in the lot at Acme Garage. In 1975, it was just a nearly 20 year-old car.
Maybe it’s the camera perspective, but that model seems quite tall and makes the big Mark look smaller than it usually does.
When I saw one at a car show 40 odd years ago, it seemed quite tall, but wikipedia says it’s only 56″, which makes it low for the time and for recent big sedans.
Please explain to me again why the 1961 Continental was so shocking, when we so clearly see the 1956 Continental shunning every stupid Virgil Exner excess? This fantastic automobile shows up in 1955, yet Detroit stylists are fabricating hideous designs that are the 180 degree opposite of elegance and taste.
We can excuse poor Imperial as it was under the direct hand of the mad stylist there at Chrysler. Yet what excuse could be given for Cadillac? Worse, what was the thinking behind the 1958 – 1960 Lincoln? Did Ford stylist freak out when they saw what was being designed in Highland Park, and tossed this elegant design over their shoulders for a weird concaved fendered, slanted headlight, unibody monster?
How can Ford go from this to that, and then back to create the 1961 Continental within a matter of a few years?
Over the past few weeks, we’ve been reviewing the 1958-1962 domestic luxury car designs here, and I’ve been asking myself how could any manufacturer make themselves believe that luxury was a yard high rear fin with twin toy rocket afterburners for each rear fender? How could Detroit be so removed from the archetectural trends, the fashion trends in colors, hues and fabrics offered on Savoy Row, and the general art trends we see during that era’s contemporary fine arts?
The Continental Mark II fits that era, and fit that era right on through to the mid-1960s. It is the space-ship flamboyance that doesn’t. How could just a complete break happen? Even today, the finned beasts of this era don’t convey luxury or taste – just the opposite.
Excellent points, VanillaDude, and I agree totally.
Just my opinion, but I think the Mark II moved away from the excesses of Harley Earl and Virgil Exner in an effort to recapture the elegance of the 1940-48 Continental. Actually, the same style is evident in the ’55 Thunderbird. But neither of those cars sold exceptionally well.
I think a turning point was reached when the ’58 Thunderbird, which was influenced by the ’55 Thunderbird and ’56 Continental, was a huge sales success. Then, the ’61 Lincoln adopted that style. I think part of what made the ’61 Lincoln seem so dramatic is that it was a direct competitor to the more flamboyant Cadillac, and was Lincoln’s only offering that year.
Well stated. I completely agree with you.
Please explain to me again why the 1961 Continental was so shocking, when we so clearly see the 1956 Continental shunning every stupid Virgil Exner excess? This fantastic automobile shows up in 1955, yet Detroit stylists are fabricating hideous designs that are the 180 degree opposite of elegance and taste.
Because there were always competing design directions at all the companies. A number of very different (and quite flashy) concepts were considered for the Mk II before settling on the definitive one by John Reinhart, which was called “Modern Formal”. If you want to see the other concepts, they’re in my CC on the Mk II:
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/curbside-classics-american/curbside-classic-1956-continental-mark-ii/
The Mk II might well have looked more like the Batmobile or a preview of the ’61 Bulletbird.
Why did they choose the “Modern Formal” concept? Because the Fords were trying very hard to evoke the already-classic original Continental.
Detroit was perfectly capable of designing understated, formal and clean cars, but they chose to go with flamboyant, finny and Googie. Let’s remember that the target demo for the Mk II was quite different from a ’57 Chrysler product, and even a Cadillac.
The ’58 Lincoln actually is largely “Modern Formal” in its fundamental shape and lack of fins; they just went a bit overboard on some of the details. There’s much more continuity from it to the ’61 Conti than say from a ’59 Cadillac. Ford in general was more “formal”, as in say the ’59 Ford. And of course the Mk II was also meant to evoke the original ’55 T-Bird, which was rather restrained.
If the ’61 Continental shocked anyone, it was because it was a total turnaround from the direction that the ’58 thru ’60 Lincolns were going with their overly complex designs that bordered on the bizarre.
The elegant simplicity of the 1961s stood out among the chrome laden, finned cars of the years leading up to it. It borrowed that theme from the Mark II as well as a few styling elements such as its taillights and front grille texture.
GM owned the conversation. Ford was actually the styling leader from ’36 to ’61, in both cars and trucks. Every successful trend started at Ford. GM usually followed Ford a couple years later, but always managed to take the credit for leading.
The Continental Cotillion!
Ads like this were in (probably) National Geographics and Life magazine and elsewhere. They weren’t even like other car ads of the time.
I beg to differ, although the ’59 Cadillacs you seem to be referring to were indeed giant taste free examples of Harley Earlesque (even if he was gone by then) excess.
Thanks for posting three photos of front ends of beautiful Lincolns. Lincoln was a style leader through the postwar period. This ’56 Lincoln front end might complete the set.
A jpg image and it didn’t qualify. Google, everyone.
Well maybe this one will work. Youneverknow.
I love the ’56 Continental and always have .
I can’t imagine anyone then nor now looking at it and not seeing pure luxury .
-Nate
One explanation might be that Continental was a separate division at Ford. Not a Part of Lincoln. So it was developed separately from the regular Lincoln line up. Still, if designers are influenced by other competing American and European designs, it seems hard to believe that Lincoln’s designers weren’t aware of what was going on at the Continental division. Or maybe Lincoln felt that their competition was with Cadillac, and their buyers still wanted all that flash.
With wartime 90% top marginal tax rates in place until the early ’60s, there really wasn’t as much of an ultra-luxury market as there had been up to the 1930s or since the 1980s. The standard Lincoln and Cadillac models were pretty much the ceiling with a few exceptions.
Vanilla Dude is on t Mark – pardon the pun. It is for me one of the preeminent auto designs ever. I love them. At eighty years of age, yes, I have seen many of them up front, despite the few that were built. Former governor of New York, Nelson Rockefeller, drove his for twenty years. He kept it at his Maine summer home. It now resides at Kykuit, the family home in Sleepy Hollow, NY. The execution of these automobiles is stunning both for elegance of exterior lines as well as interior appointments. Have you ever seen the convertible?
The Facebook groups devoted to Continental have lots of info based on actual FoMoCo development documents–takes away much of the conjecture:
I saw one of these beauties in 2021 at the Petersen Auto Museum in Los Angeles. It was downstairs in the vault, right next to a gold-plated Delorean!
(No pictures allowed in the vault though.)
The Schultz? collection in Florida has 2 or 3, including two owned by the Ford family. They specialize in low mileage originals. I can’t remember the name of their auto parts company, but a tour is on the youtube of the guy with the handlebar mustache.
The near-vertical windshield looks odd and un-aerodynamic to us, but probably wasn’t at the time. Like the E type and 70s Camaro, they wanted maximum hood.
Growing up, neighbors down the street had a silver MarkII. They’d bought it new and drove it for years. By the early 1970’s it had become a hanger queen… never leaving the garage, but still a prized possession. I mowed their lawn back then, I got to peer into it, and the owner popped the hood to show me the engine, but I never sat inside. When I left home after college it was still there; I’ve no clue what ever happened to it.