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Junkyard Gem: 1972 Lincoln Continental Mark IV

For most of the period from the middle 1950s through the late 1990s, the Lincoln Marks were the most expensive cars Americans could buy from the Ford Motor Company. During the 1970s, the Mark III, Mark IV, and Mark V personal luxury coupes were built on the same chassis as the then-massive Thunderbird, with curb weights hovering around 5,000 pounds. Here's a 1972 Mark IV, from the year when engine power really started its Malaise Era fall off a cliff, photographed in a Denver-area self-service yard. The list price on this car started at $8,640, which amounts to something like $61,445 in 2022 bucks. That was quite a bit less than the $10,634 Mercedes-Benz 280 SEL 4.5, though the Benz had the more powerful V8 engine. Power ratings had just gone to net rather than gross numbers, so this massive 460-cubic-inch (7.5-liter) V8 was rated at just 224 horsepower (ever-stricter emission rules knocked actual power down as well). At least the torque was still pretty good, at 342 pound-feet. Runs on regular gas! This car clearly spent quite a while, probably at least a couple of decades, sitting outdoors in the harsh Colorado climate. The seat upholstery is deeply irradiated. The padded vinyl roof didn't fare well beneath the sun. Someone has torn apart the dash, but you can still see the classy Cartier clock hiding in the wreckage. There's some rust, enough to scare off anyone who might have been interested in performing a restoration. The Continental Mark IV's main rival was the Cadillac Eldorado, which was slightly smaller and (marginally) less packed with bling. The '72 Imperial LeBaron was cheaper and boasted one more horsepower than the Mark IV, but seemed stodgy next to the devil-may-care Lincoln. This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings. More than 8,000 owners of that luxury car switched to Continental for '71.

Lincoln prepping MKZ re-launch?

Launching an all-new car is no easy task. Case in point is the 2013 Lincoln MKZ, introduced with the fanfare of a major nationwide marketing campaign, including expensive Super Bowl ads, just as Ford was curbing production over potential quality issues. The resulting mess was nothing short of a nightmare for any automaker - customers visiting dealerships looking for cars that hadn't been delivered yet. Disappointed buyers walked out of Lincoln retailers without new keys in their hands, or switched to a competing brand to fill empty spaces in their driveways.
The impact was painful, as Lincoln's sales in January and February of this year were among the lowest it has recorded in more than a quarter century. Even though March looked a bit brighter, with the supply crisis reportedly over (there are 3,000 units in transit and production is approaching 200 units per day) the automaker is reportedly studying the feasibility of giving its pivotal MKZ the launch it originally deserved.
According to TheDetroitBureau.com, putting the MKZ back on consumer's radar could cost Ford tens of millions of dollars, but that kind of investment may be warranted if potential buyers have forgotten about the new model... or worse, if they have forgotten about Lincoln.

Junkyard Gem: 1979 Lincoln Continental Town Car

Ford built Continentals from the 1940 through 2020 model years (with a couple of pauses during that period), and the biggest and arguably most extreme Continentals of all were the 1977-1979 models. That's what we've got for today's Junkyard Gem: a 1979 Continental Town Car with Cream paint outside and plenty of Light Gold Jubilee velour inside, found in a self-service boneyard in Sparks, Nevada. Thanks to the big 5 mph crash bumpers, the overall length of the 1977-1979 Continental sedan stretched to an astounding 233 inches. That's more than a foot longer than the 2024 Lincoln Navigator, though the Navigator scales in at more than a half-ton heavier than the '79 Continental sedan. For the 1980 model year, the Continental went onto the Panther platform and shed 10 inches of wheelbase, more than 13 inches of length and 500 pounds of curb weight. Considering the geopolitical events of 1979 and their effect on fuel prices, this turned out to be good timing … but the downsized '80 Continental didn't look as imposing (or as white-powder-dusted) when it pulled up to the valet parking stand at the disco. When your sedan weighs 4,649 pounds, you want serious power under its hood Â… and that was a rare commodity among 1979 automobiles sold in the United States. This is a 400-cubic-inch (6.6-liter) pushrod V8, essentially a stroked 351 Cleveland, rated at 159 horsepower and 315 pound-feet. That means that each of this car's horses had to drag 29.2 pounds, a ratio that's quite a bit worse than that of the much-maligned-for-slowness 2024 Mitsubishi Mirage (though the respectable torque made driving these cars tolerable enough in most situations). The interior was all about cushy seats and space to stretch out. The silver-faced gauges were very classy. Opera lights? You bet! This would have been an excellent, if thirsty, long-distance highway cruiser for its day. There were some 1999 coupons inside, suggesting that the car had been parked for a quarter-century before coming to this place. The high-elevation desert sun is murder on vinyl roofs. On January 10, 1981, people associated with this fine luxury automobile played golf at Willow Glen in San Diego. On the same day, Richard Boone died and Jared Kushner was born. This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings. A standard by which luxury cars are judged.