1977 Lincoln Versailles - Fighting For My Right To Party

Ford's Lincoln Versailles was a direct response to GM's Cadillac Seville.

What's worse, arriving so late for a party that you completely missed it or being at a party that got busted by the cops and you got hauled off to jail? I'd say the former because any party that gets broken up by the cops sounds like my idea of a good time. Especially if I only get charged with a misdemeanor. Sadly, when it came to my automotive youth, by the time I could tell the difference between a hubcap and a torque wrench, the party was long over, and I was left with sorry, pretentious hulks like this 1977 Lincoln Versailles to ogle.

Built between 1977 and 1980, the Versailles was Ford's answer to Cadillac's successful Seville. Ford had a difficult time finding buyers for the Versailles, in part because it did a less successful job of hiding its humble underpinnings than GM did with the Nova-based Cadillac Seville.

When this oddly handsome, somewhat re-skinned Ford Granada came on the market, muscle cars—the party—were verboten, and the most powerful domestic car sold in this country was the 220-horsepower Pontiac Trans Am. Admiring luxury cars was akin to drinking flat, warm diet soda left over from the party as opposed to guzzling Jack and Coke. You can't blame me for having no idea how much fun I was not having.

Ford added insult to injury by charging nearly three times as much for a Versailles as it did for a base Granada.

I had to fight for my right to party, and I did wholeheartedly. While my shenanigans may never have involved the po-po—well, maybe once or twice—nothing ever really came of it aside from my stomach lining getting chewed up from the stress of possibly spending a night in the slammer. The anticipation of such being, in many ways, much worse than it actually happening.

Ford discontinued the Versailles early in 1980. The smaller, Fox-bodied Lincoln Continental arrived for 1982.

Same held true whenever I would get behind the wheel of something with anything north of the power-to-weight ratio of something like this Lincoln Versailles, which was atypical of cars in the early years of the Malaise Era. A 220-horsepower T/A felt like a Saturn V rocket booster by comparison, and I indulged appropriately. Somewhat responsibly, too, considering any T/A I drove belonged to someone else.

The Palace of Versailles, or simply Versailles, is a royal château in Versailles in the Île-de-France region of France.

That big party did have its downside, though, like pollution and, at least according to insurance companies, unsafe driving due to reckless driving of overpowered automobiles. The staid, luxury-oriented cars that followed the muscle-car era helped pave the way for the cars of today, which manage to combine even greater power—not to mention far, far superior overall performance than those '60s cars—with uncompromised luxury and, if need be, utility.

Still, it must have been fun to have been at the party when the cops showed up versus only hearing about it because you showed up too late.