1988 Lincoln Continental Mark VII - Hot Rod Lincoln

In 1978 Ford started their downsizing by introducing an all new compact platform or chassis that was internally code named, "Fox". What would become known as the Fox body platform, in varying wheelbase lengths, would come to underpin a wide variety of vehicles for the Ford Motor Company including the 1978-83 Ford Fairmont and Mercury Zephyr, 1979-94 Ford Mustang, 1979-86 Mercury Capri, 1980-82 Ford Granada, 1980-88 Mercury Cougar, 1980-88 Ford Thunderbird, 1982-87 Lincoln Continental, 1983-86 Ford LTD, 1983-86 Mercury Marquis and the subject of our blog today, the 1984-1992 Lincoln Mark VII. Our feature car is a 1988 Bill Blass edition. 

Compared to the boxy Mark VI that came before it, the Mark VII was as radically different looking as the suicide door 1961 Continental was compared to a 1960 Continental. Thanks to MacPherson struts up front, the Fox platform also gave the Mark VII handling capabilities like no other Lincoln before it. Including the "Panther" body based VI that in and of itself was a radical departure from the levianthesque Mark V it replaced.  

Performance aside, though, the Mark VII had a difficult and very tight line to drive. Luxury car buyers are a notoriously fickle and are abhorrent to change. The styling of the VII couldn't stray too far from Lincolns of yore yet could not being as staid and true to older models like the knife edged, boxy VI if they had any shot at younger buyers. The polarizing trunk hump as much a nod to Lincoln's past as it was a styling differentiation from the similar Ford Thunderbird and Mercury Cougar that it shared the Fox platform with. While the VII has aged quite well, buyers, particularly older Lincoln clientelle, were indifferent towards it at first. That indifference stemming in large part from the car's much tidier dimensions compared to the VI; the Greatest Generation were sold on the  the size of a car being reflective of ones stature. The Mark VII, and its four door version the 1982 Continental, much like the 1975 Cadillac Seville and German makes and models like the Mercedes Benz  280 S, went a long way towards changing that age old bigger is better paradigm.  

Lincoln did have challenges within the Ford Motor Company to charge the premium they did for the VII since it did share as much as it did with Thunderbird and Cougar; VII's sticker priced in the mid to high $20,000's while Thunderbirds and Courgers cost maybe half that much. Styling and "premium" nameplate aside, to make the Mark VII as exclusive as possible, the "High Output" 5.0 liter V-8 from the Mustang GT was made available on the VII and was never made available on either Thunderbird or Cougar. That engine, incidentally, helped give the VII it's tongue in cheek moniker, "Hot Rod Lincoln". 

Save for some luxury accoutrements found on even the most plebeian of vehicles today, the interior of the Mark VII was virtually indistinguishable from that of a Thunderbird or Cougar of the same vintage. Have to imagine there had to have been more than just a handful of people who cross shopped these cars and wondered why the Lincoln version of the Thunderbird was priced so much higher. 

The idea of a four passenger, two door sedan seems almost as foreign today as trying to imagine a world without wifi. As good as the Mark VII was and as much of a value as it was compared to similar vehicles from Germany, even by the mid 1980's, consumer tastes were moving away from doggedly impractical, expensive vehicles like this. If luxury buyers bought domestically, and that was a big if even back then, they began buying stylish and infinitely more practical sport utility vehicles. Lincoln replaced the VII with the the flamboyant Mark VIII for 1994 but by then SUV's had really taken hold in this country leaving not only the market for the Mark VIII tiny, but the market for two door sedans in general tiny as well. Lincoln hasn't made a two Mark, or anything with two doors, since 1999. Although the Fox platform underwent a near complete redesign for the 1994 Mustang, it technically remained in production under the Mustang through 2004 making it, along with Panther chassis and Model T, one of the longest running and successful platforms in Ford history. 

"Hot Rod Lincoln" is a song by singer songwriter Charlie Ryan and a recording of it by Johnny Bond was first released in 1955. The song is about a hot rodded Ford Model A powered by a Lincoln V-12 engine and not a song, literally, about a Lincoln automobile. The most famous version of the song was recorded by Commander Cody and released in 1971. 

1977 Ford LTD - Darkest Before Dawn

This 1977 Ford LTD sat for sale for well over eighteen months at a used car lot not far from my home here in Cleveland. Sitting as long as it did, it became a landmark of sorts and the longer it remained unsold the more assured I was in my drive by assessment of it that no one would ever buy it.

Well, never say never. It disappeared shortly before the lot closed. I wonder if someone actually bought it or if it went to auction and was sold to another of these little lots that dot the landscape here in northeast Ohio and northwest Pennsylvania. They do say there's an ass for ever seat but Big Red here was a tough putt - like a super needy, sickly but sweet old dog in a need of a forever home, the odds were stacked against it despite it being in great shape and with a reasonable asking price of around four thousand dollars. There's an enthusiast market for two door sedans and station wagons but four door sedans? Nada.

Man, these cars were big and standing next to it the anxiety came back to me that I felt as a young, inexperienced driver behind the wheel of a big car. While the John Wayne in me would never let on how scared I was, trust me, I was freaked the hell out. Back in the 1970's, it wasn't as if people didn't know that cars were too big either. Going back to the '40's, American cars were derided for their sheer mass but Detroit kept making them incrementally bigger and bigger. Things really got out of hand, though, in the 1970's. Iron like Big Red were not only bigger than ever, on the cusp of the great downsizing epoch that was spear headed by GM starting in 1977. they were biggest they'd ever be. What is it they say about it being darkest before dawn?

It wasn't so much the length of these cars I found so intimidating - it was their width. At give or take eighty inches wide, that's nearly eight feet, having handling that could best be described as nautical and seats as spongy as a broken sofa with no side bolstering to speak of save for leaning against a door or the poor, hump sitting middle passenger, they felt wider than a school bus. Being maybe five foot ten at my tallest, in a big car like this without a power seat to push me up to where my scalp was skimming the headliner, I always felt like as though I was looking up and over the steering wheel as opposed to sitting squarely behind it and being able to see the mass expanse of hood in front of the firewall. How I never side swiped a parked car is beyond me. Maybe I did and I didn't realize it.

For decades, Detroit marketed "bigger was better" and many buyers, like my father for instance, thought big cars like this handled like dream boats. Compared to the crude contraptions they grew up with, these softly sprung cars with automatic transmissions, over boosted steering and air conditioning where modicums of modernity. And, bless my father's heart,  I don't recall ever hearing him complain that whatever barge he had was "too big". Although, there were plenty of times he scraped the side of the of the garage or backed it into parked cars, trees or sign posts. He also had an embarrassing habit of rubbing the right front tire on the curb in front of our pre-war home on a oh-so-narrow south Nassau County, New York street to make sure he was parked properly.

Thing is, despite all that size, cars like this didn't have interiors that were much more spacious than smaller cars like a Granada. The size was all for show - the interiors were horribly inefficient. Sure, they were wider giving the hump sitting middle passenger more room side to side but aside from that, interior room on big cars back then was atrocious.

Let's not over the lovely color combination of our subject too. No doubt the litany of interior color options led to a customization that doesn't exist today off showroom floors but it also led to variances in assembly that compromised quality. I steel feel bad, though, for whomever had to sit on the damn hump in the back or the front. Kids today have no idea how good they've got it. By the way, how safe was it having a person sitting right up against the driver anyway?

American automobile manufacturers began to make larger cars with the advent of all steel bodies in the 1930's. However, it was after engineering innovation hit a plateau in the mid to late 1950's that things started to get really out of hand. What with most if not all of the accouterments once construed as luxury items having trickled down to even entry level makes and models and further innovation being cost prohibitive, Detroit resorted to gimmicky styling to appeal to buyers. For certain, while a 1960 Ford sedan may look nothing like Big Red here, there's really not much of a difference between the two of them "under the hood". That kind of long term engineering stagnation is seemingly unfathomable today.

As far as sheer bulk, for most of the 1960's, Ford's full size sedans were around two hundred and ten inches long and seventy six inches wide. Large, yes, but relatively maneuverable compared to the brutes that they came out with in the 1970's. That massive up sizing started with their 1969 models that while more than six inches longer than 1968 models, at least came with a bump in wheel base that had the benefit of giving rear passengers a scoshe more leg room. 1973 saw another up-sizing that, along with federally mandated "safety bumpers", helped to make Ford sedans like Big Red stretch the tape measure out to more than two hundred and twenty four inches long. That's comically huge.

Ford only made them this big between 1973 and 1978 and their timing couldn't have been worse. The OPEC embargo in October 1973 knocked the snot out of sales of big, thirsty cars and they never recovered. Couple that with the imports finally beginning to get a real toe hold at the time and its easy to see how and why road dinosaurs like Big Red became extinct.

So, what happened to Big Red? Hard to imagine someone bought this as a daily driver but you never know. Certainly would make for an interesting ride but it would be so expensive to gas up given this thing might get eleven or twelve miles per gallon. Hey, maybe some movie company scooped it up for use in a period piece they're making? That would be cool. Suffice to say, regardless of what happened to it, whatever we come up with is probably more interesting. 

1996 Chevrolet Impala SS - Lipstick On A Pig

Years ago, General Motors had a curious habit of discontinuing production on cars just as they got them right  - or as right as they could be. The 1969 Corvair and 1988 Pontiac Fiero come to mind as examples of cars they tweaked and prodded for years and then, just as they got them right, poof, they were gone. Another example is the 1994-1996 Chevrolet Impala SS incarnation of the 1991 Chevrolet Caprice.

The 1994-1996 Impala SS was born of the ashes of GM's comical 1991 "Shamu" Caprice, one of the most bizarre, dare I say botched, redesigns in automobile history. The 1991 Caprice struggled to find buyers and while much of that struggle had to do with a market shift away from sedans towards SUV's, the car's over the top styling certainly didn't help. Still, the 1991 Caprice was nothing if not distinctive if somewhat handsome looking from certain angles; copious studio lighting helping our brochure car look almost glamorous. The most unusual styling detail being the quasi fender skirting on the rear quarter panels. Personally, I never warmed to it and often wondered, like many people I would have to imagine, would the car look more conventional, mainstream and less controversial without the skirts? 

Oh...well...be careful what you wish for. Not unlike the 1974 Buick Riviera sans boat tail, for 1993 Chevrolet removed the '91 Carprice's most distinctive styling detail and turned what was a strange, albeit balanced design into one that was suddenly unbalanced and drab; in addition to still being strange looking. That awkwardness stemming from the fact that the rear wheels didn't quite line up perfectly in the wheel wells; they looked fine on the fender skirted models since the misalignment appeared to part of the design but the rear end on the car needed a complete overhaul from the rear doors back with the skirts gone to balance things out and...Chevrolet opted not to do that. Why? We can only guess it was because GM knew they were going to off the car in just a couple of years and went the less expensive and time consuming route of just removing the skirts to appease buyers who didn't appreciate them. While it ruined any semblance of design unity on the Caprice, there's no doubt it did wonders for the Impala SS that came in 1994. 

Can't imagine what a fender skirted Impala SS would have looked like. Amazing what a little sprucing up can do for a car; the addition of sharp and beefy aluminum 18 inch rims, a lowered police car suspension, a blacked out grill and removal of most of the chrome from the Caprice and an otherwise forgettable automobile was suddenly Prom King. Actually, these cars were so big the entire prom could have fit in it. There was also the matter of a new-for-1994, 260 horsepower, 350 cubic inch LT-1 V-8 that helped turned the car into a performance watershed. Sometimes, lip stick on a pig works wonders.

It's ironic that in 1994 a sub model of the Caprice, which was for all intents and purposes the top of the line Caprice, was called Impala. Caprice began as a top of the line trim level of Impala in 1965.

The 1994-1996 Impala SS washed away most of the sins of the 1993 Caprice and let's be honest, the 1991 Caprice as well. However, despite cheap gas in the 1990's, Impala SS was unable to stem the tide of buyers who would have bought it ten years prior from buying the scourge of the full size car in the 1990's, sport utility vehicles. 

If you can't beat them, build them. After 1996, General Motors closed the Arlington, Texas factory that made these cars retooling it to build sport utility vehicles. Seeing how long it takes to rebuild a factory, it is interesting that General Motors spent any time on building a low volume, niche vehicle like the 1994-1996 Chevrolet Impala SS. Personally, I've always been glad that they did since it's always been one of only a handful of sedans that I've ever liked enough to seriously consider buying.