Leslie R. Henry wrote an article in Automobile Quarterly (Volume VII # 3, Fall 1968) simply titled “The Lincoln.”His opening paragraph says a lot about Lincoln cars up to that time:
“Some enthusiasts speak of them with passion. Others find them interesting. But no one seriously interested in fine automobiles can be indifferent to the Lincoln. There is the consummate artistry that makes the first Lincoln powerplant a thing of physical beauty as well as of mechanical excellence. There is the serious coachwork created for the Lincoln chassis. And there is the story of the founder of the Lincoln company.’
Henry wrote his article at an appropriate time. The Lincolns that followed the cars of the late 1960s were no match for those that came before.
Lincoln Motor Company
Unlike many automobile companies, Lincoln was not named for its founder, but for a man who was one of his heroes. Henry Martin Leland was born in Vermont in 1843. As a young man, he was apprenticed in northeast mills, then worked as a toolmaker in the Springfield Arsenal in Massachusetts during the Civil War. After the war, he worked for machine tool maker Brown and Sharpe in Rhode Island before moving to Detroit in 1890. Leland created the Leland, Faulconer, and Norton Company in Detroit to produce machine tools.
They set up a gray iron foundry in 1896 and began producing marine engines, which positioned them well when the Oldsmobile factory was destroyed by fire in 1901, and they began to provide engines to Oldsmobile. The next year, Leland became the Chief Engineer for the company that William H. Murphy created with Henry Ford. Ford had more interest in building race cars and than in production cars, so he soon left. The company that would produce road cars was named the Cadillac Automobile Company, and it soon absorbed Leland, Faulconer, and Norton.
About that same time, Ford, with funds from Alexander Y. Malcolmson, created the Ford Motor Company. Cadillac, thanks to Leland’s insistence on precision and close tolerances, was a surprisingly powerful car for a single cylinder. In 1909, Cadillac was bought by William C. Durant as he built General Motors. With Leland as President, there were numerous developments including the first self-starter and the first 90º V8 engine in an American car. As WWI approached, Leland wanted to concentrate on building Liberty aircraft engines.
Durant disagreed, and that led to both Leland and his son, Wilfred, leaving to create their own firm to build 6500 Liberty engines during the war. The new company, named for President Lincoln, needed a new product at the end of the war.
The first Lincoln automobiles, which appeared in 1920, were based on pre-WWI Cadillac designs. The engine was a 5863 cc V8, but it was a 60º engine versus Cadillac’s 90º engine. The car had a full-pressure lubrication system and the first thermostatically operated radiator shutters.
The styling was old-fashioned, designed by Leland’s son-in-law who was not very artistically gifted. The company was soon in financial trouble. Leland insistence on quality slowed production, the cars were expensive, and sales never met their target. Faced with a claim for back taxes amounting to $4.5 million, the company went into receivership in February 1922.
Lincoln Motor Company was bought by Henry Ford. According to the “Beaulieu Encyclopedia of the Automobile,” Ford bought it “partly to have a luxury brand and partly to punish Leland for breaking their partnership in 1902.”Leland was invited to stay, but he moved on. It was unlikely that Leland, a perfectionist, wanted to have to deal with the authoritarian Ford. Edsel Ford became the President of Lincoln with Ernest C. Kanzler as General Manager. The first change was to reduce the cost of the cars, resulting in the first profit for the company in 1923.
Lincolns became very popular with police and gangsters because of their reliability and speed, but the police versions also had front brakes, which were not available on other models for another three years.
Edsel Ford benefitted Lincoln because of his interest in style. Leland was focused on precision, but there was no one at Lincoln in the early days who was artistic. Ford, on the other hand, had kept a scrapbook that included European designs that he admired. His father allowed him to do whatever he wanted with Lincoln, eventually becoming the ultimate decision-maker on design for the company. Under Edsel, the only Lincoln-bodied inhouse was the standard tourer. A wide variety of custom coachbuilders were engaged to make bodies for other models.
There were plenty of models that needed bodies – 32 in 1926. Edsel had an interesting approach to these custom body designs. When a particular one appealed to him, he had the coachbuilder produce it in lots of 100. This kept the cost of a custom-bodied car much lower than for a one-off. Edsel’s influence caused Lincoln to go from frumpy,square-lookingg cars to some very attractive cars in the early 1930’s.
Lincoln sales were hurt during the early part of the Depression, but the company managed to weather the bad economy. The biggest news was the addition of a 7340 cc V12 producing 150 bhp. The model KB had a three-speed transmission with second and third gear synchronized.
The V8 engine was dropped in 1933 and replaced with a smaller 6255 cc V12 for the model KA. Lincoln would produce only V12-engined cars for the next 16 years, although the previous engines were replaced by one with 6784 cc displacement and aluminum heads.
As the Depression dragged on, Charles Sorensen, the executive in charge of all Ford production, suggested that the Lincoln marque be closed.That alarmed the Briggs Body Company, since they did the finishing and trimming on Lincolns. To overcome the move toward closing Lincoln, the Briggs company worked on a medium-priced Lincoln design in secret. Tom Tjaarda designed a very streamlined, rear-engined sedan he named a Sterkenberg.
The name came from Tjaarda’s full Dutch family name – Tjaarda van Sterkenberg.Edsel was shown the design, and he liked it. A mock-up was then shown to Sorensen and Henry Ford in mid-1932. A rear-engined car was thought to be a bit too radical for the time, so the design was modified to be a six-passenger, front-engined sedan. Edsel, preferring more power, called for the car to have a 4380 cc V12 producing 110 bhp. The Zephyr appeared in November 1935.
It was the first Lincoln that did not evolve from the Leland era. While quite streamlined for the time, the Zephyr was not as extreme as the Chrysler/DeSoto Airflow. In the “Beaulieu Encyclopedia of the Automobile,” it was noted that “the V-shaped grille appeared to cleave the air in a more satisfactory way than the Chrysler waterfall.’
The Zephyr was soon outselling the more traditional Lincoln Model K.Price was certainly a consideration, since the Zephyr two-door and four-door sedans sold for $1275 and $1320, respectively, compared to Model K prices that ranged from $4200 to $8000.Sales of the Zephyr reached 13,635 in 1936 compared to 1523 Model Ks. It is somewhat of a surprise that the Model K was continued through the 1930s. It was dropped in 1940.
In the years up to 1940, the most significant changes to the Zephyr were the addition of a three-seat coupé and a four-door convertible. A new, very attractive grille was added, making the Zephyr even more Deco. The design of the Zephyr was very successful; the Museum of Modern Art called it “the first successfully streamlined car in America.”
Lincoln Continental
Edsel wanted something special for his vacation in Florida in 1939, so he ordered a “special” Zephyr convertible. Designed by E.T. “Bob” Gregorie, the car had the front of a ’39 Zephyr and a very distinctive rear with a European look and an exposed rear tire cover. The car was shipped to him in Florida, where it received a lot of attention. By the time he was heading back to Detroit, he had something like 200 orders for a car that was not in production. He had two more built for two of his sons, Henry II and Benson, and those also received a lot of attention.
That attention was responsible for what Edsel called his “Continental Coupé” being put into production in 1940 as the first Lincoln Continental. There were few changes to the Continental except for some additional horsepower and a restyled front through the 1942 model year. With the US joining the Allies in WWII, only 336 Continentals were built before the factories turned to war production. The Continental returned in 1946 and continued until 1948. It was redesigned in 1949, looking somewhat ponderous.
After that, Lincolns shared bodies with Mercury cars and were called Cosmopolitans. Lincoln Continental enthusiasts, as well as Lincoln dealers, were not pleased, and pressed the company to design a new Continental they could be proud to win.
Continental MK II (Don’t Call it a Lincoln)
The heat had been felt, and a special unit was created, headed by Edsel’s son William Clay Ford, to design a new Continental. Market research claimed that there were 250,000-300,000 families who could spend $10,000 on a new luxury car. A critical word in that research was “could.”Ford decided to take a chance that they “would” spend that kind of money on an automobile. At the time, the most expensive Cadillac cost $5643, so it was quite a gamble.
The special unit requested designs from both in-house designers and independent stylists. The submissions were all required to be drawn to the same scale, in the same color, and be unsigned. When reviewed by the special unit, the choice was unanimous – the Lincoln styling studio had won the right to do the design.
According to Cullen Thomas in his article titled “Lincoln Continental – A Thrice Told Tale” (Automobile Quarterly Volume VI #4, Spring 1968), design responsibility was given to John Reinhart, who said, “All we’re trying to do is make the Continental, inside and out, the best-looking car in the world.”The intent was to make a modern version of the original Continental – “elegantly simple, classic, precise of line, and perfect in proportion.”It would be produced only as a two-door coupé, and it would be a Continental, built by a division separate from Lincoln. The target price was $8000, but the 1956 Continental MK II was listed for $9695.After two years of production, the MK II was dropped. The market research said many families “could” spend $10,000 on a luxury car, but the reality was not that many of them “would.”The Continental MK II was a beautiful car and was extremely well-built.It has become a very desirable car in the collector market.
Lincoln Continentals (Yet Again)
Continental, as a separate division, was reintegrated into Lincoln, but it appears that the muse that influenced the designer of the MK II had been battered into submission. In an article published in Automobile Quarterly (Volume XXIII #4, Fourth Quarter 1985) titled “Lincoln Continental – 1961-1969 – The American Aristocrat,” Nick Cole was not at all kind about the design of the cars Lincoln produced between 1957 and 1960. About two of the models, he said, the 1957 model was an ode to excess. The 1958 model was an endless verse.
”The theme appeared to be longer, lower, wider, and, he said, “Buyers found the barge-like 1958, 1959, and 1960 Lincolns only slightly more attractive than a Tugboat.” Lincoln’s share of the new car market dropped to 0.3%, while Cadillac’s share was 2.2%. It was obvious that Lincoln needed to rethink its design.
Elwood P. Engel, John Najjar, Robert M. Thomas, and Colin Neale were staff stylists working on a new design for the 1961 Thunderbird. Robert McNamara, who had risen through the ranks at Ford by pushing the company to modernize, had been pressing for a smaller Continental. When he saw the design for the Thunderbird, he asked if the car could be stretched eighteen inches to become the new Continental.
Cole quoted Engel as saying, “In those days, all the cars were pretty monstrous – the bumpers, grilles, and ornamentation were God-awful. They just went too far. So when I started the ’61 Continental, I made damn sure it didn’t have any of those big heavy-looking torpedo bumper guards or fins.”Najjar gives credit to Engel for the success of the design: “Without Elwood, I don’t think the car would have ended up that way. He was the driving force behind putting the car together the way it was.
”It was a beauty. It had smooth gently curving sheet metal with little ornamentation to distract from its clean lines. It was also smaller than the previous years at fifteen inches shorter, three inches lower, and two inches narrower. It was a reversal of the idea that “bigger is better.”It became a trendsetter.
The car was going to be more than just a show car, it was going to be built to the highest standards in the industry. Serious efforts were made to ensure that the car was the durable, near-perfect car that McNamara wanted. Every engine and transmission was run on a test stand for an hour or more toensuree smoothness and reliability. Then the pan was dropped and the crankshaft and rods inspected, all before installing them in a car. When a car reached the end of the assembly line, specially trained test drivers took it on a twelve-mile road test, the longest test drive in the industry.
The cars were driven without a back seat, trim panels, or carpets so the test driver could better hear any noises. The driver used a checklist of nearly 200 items toensuree the car was not only quiet, but that the brakes, shifting, and cornering was up to the standards set for the car. After the road test, the car was put on a “slick-up” line to correct any issues, install the remaining interior pieces, and check all electrical components.
A production test car nicknamed the “Grey Ghost” was run for 100,000 miles on Ford’s 38.7-mile test track, putting the car through its track full of road hazards and testing its acceleration and braking repeatedly. When the car was announced, Lincoln showed how much it believed in the Continental by providing a two-year, 24,000-mile warranty – twice what was offered on any other 1961 American automobile. Road & Track magazine called the Continental one of the seven best-made cars in the world.
Even from a distance, the car was stunning. When looking closer, though, the car proved to be amazing. The doors, in particular, caught your attention. With no B-Pillar, the rear doors are hinged at the rear – “suicide doors.”Volume 3 # 12, Autumn 2023, of Rare and Unique Vehicles included an article by Erik Eckermann titled “To B, or Not to B,” telling the history of cars built without B Pillars, thus allowing the entire side of the car to be opened. In the early days, these doors earned the moniker “suicide doors” because the lack of the extra structure allowed excessive body flexing often resulting in the doors popping open.
While the Continental is often called the “Suicide Door Continental,” the engineers did their job to make sure the doors did not open, allowing passengers to fall out or the door to be damaged. First, there was the unibody, which was designed to have the rigidity needed to keep the body from flexing. They added a hydraulic/electric combination lock on all four doors that locked automatically when the car was moving. It was released when the car stopped.
Without a B-Pillar, the car allowed easy access to front and rear seat passengers on a car with a relatively short wheelbase, eight inches shorter than its predecessor.
The Continental was initially produced as a four-door sedan and convertible. A two-door coupé was added in 1966. The cars were well equipped with power windows and door locks standard. Options included air conditioning, wood interior trim, power seats, and cruise control. While the sedan sold best, it was the convertible that was most loved. Considerable attention was given to the convertible top to make it easy to use and to seal well. With the top up, pressing the door handle causes the glass to drop a couple of inches, allowing the top to fit snugly against the windows.
The top mechanism was the same as that from the “Retractable” and the Thunderbird. It could be actuated from inside the car or with a key in an access panel on the outside of the car just behind the fuel door on the driver’s side of the car. It was a very clever, intricate design which is probably quite expensive to repair.
During its run from 1961 until 1969, there were few major changes to the Continental, none of which made the car look very different than the original of 1961. The most significant changes were made in model years 1966 and 1968. In 1966, the car was lengthened by five inches and widened and heightened by one inch – difficult to notice. As mentioned, a two-door coupé was added that year. Sadly, the convertible was dropped from the 1968 line-up. With demand dropping, it was decided to drop the model after 1969. Even more sad, was the replacement of the Continental with models that emphasized engine size and excess. The cars became simply a fancy Ford.
Graham Messer’s Continental
Graham Messer is a car guy with a taste in cars that is almost universal. From the TR6 to the Jag XK-150, Jensen Interceptor, Rolls Royce, and the Continental, his cars are all very nice drivers, which was what his Continental was when he acquired it. When asked why he wanted a Continental convertible, he said “I like the styling, the body lines, the uniqueness of the suicide doors, the history of the car. What makes that car so unique is rarely do you have a convertible that can comfortably seat four adult passengers, even five. And that car has that capability. I can’t think of any other convertible where the rear passengers are equally as comfortable as the front. I think that is something special that you haven’t seen since or before.”
He found his car in New Hampshire. It was, effectively, a one-owner car. It was bought new by a fellow who worked in the Lincoln factory in 1967. He bought one of the last convertible Continentals built and owned it until his passing in 2017. His son had the car until Messer bought it in 2022.“It is an original numbers-matching factory car. I think the son let it go for less than it was worth – maybe he didn’t know what he had.”But it went to someone as passionate about the car as the original owner.
Messer relates: “It survived all that time never having had any accident damage, and I had the car for 6 months and damn near totaled it. I was driving on TN-58, and a woman made a left-hand turn across the highway, giving me no space or time – stopping 6000 lbs of American steel. It was not going to happen quickly, so I plowed into her. Totaled her car. I didn’t have a seatbelt on but barely felt a thing. Smashed in the whole front end of the car.”With a unibody car, you can’t just buy a fender, so Messer had to look for parts cars with a decent front end. He found two 1967 Continental sedans that, together, had the parts he needed, and he bought them. Thankfully, the mechanical bits on the car remain original, and her insurance paid for the repairs, but it took nearly a year to get the car back. A collector in East Tennessee bought the remaining bits, so they are not cluttering up Messer’s garage.
Convertibles, because of the lack of roof structure, tend to flex more than hardtops. And without the B-Pillar structure, did Continental strengthen the car enough to avoid cowl shake or other instabilities? Messer says, “You’re not going to take a sharp turn at 50, and you’re going to have body roll. It is not a car you play in the curves with, but if you want a car for comfort, luxury, and cruise in, that is where it excels. It’s a great cruiser.”As for the suicide doors, “They’re big heavy doors, and you have to make sure they’re slammed tight. The car has a door ajar light – a bright red warning light – pretty unique for the time.”
Messer is very happy with his Continental: “It drives like a dream. It’s a pinky driver. Glides down the road. Doesn’t’ stop on a dime, but as far as comfort, probably the only car I have that rivals it is my 1960 Cadillac.”Good thing Robert McNamara didn’t hear him say that.
Specifications
- Body: Unibody four-door convertible
- Engine: OHV V8
- Displacement: 7571 cc /462.0 cu in.
- Bore: 4.4 in /111 mm
- Stroke: 3.8 in /97 mm
- Compression Ratio: 10.25:1
- Power: 340 HP (250.24 KW) @ 4600 RPM
- Torque: 485 lb-ft/657.57 NM @2800RPM
- Induction: Carter C8VF-9510E 4-barrel carburetor
- Transmission: 3-speed automatic
- Front Suspension: Coil springs, hydraulic shock absorbers
- Rear Suspension: Leaf springs, hydraulic shock absorbers
- Brakes: Power front discs, rear drums, self-adjusting
- Length: 220.9 in /5611 mm
- Width: 79.7 in /2024 mm
- Height: 54.5 in/1384mm
- Wheelbase: 126.0 in /3200 mm
- Front Track: 62.1 in/1577 mm
- Rear Track: 61.0 in/1649 mm
- Weight: 5500 lbs/2494.8 kg
- Tires: 9.15×15
