It's hard to believe that our creme colored 1977 Town Coupe subject on the left and our 1972 Town Coupe on the right are for all intents and purposes the same car. Over all, Ford changed little mechanically over the five short model years separating the two but the '72 has a much more desirable stance and presence. It looks like what it's supposed to be, an executive's automobile. The '77 looks more like some fun crushing frow-frow at the church picnic than something a well compensated "suit" would want to own. Despite its hysterically bad burnt orange paint job we think the '72 sinister cool in a Sinatra swagger kind of way. We generally don't like vinyl tops either but at least on the '72 it works to break up the orangeness. We like. A lot. The '77? Well...
There's something off. And there's a lot more to do with that than just the god awful government mandated "5 mph Safety Bumpers" bolted on fore and aft and this dreadful color scheme. The problem with this car is that it's all about the end of a most splendid styling trend that began back about 100 years ago but really began to flourish after World War II. We're talking about the unfortunate mid 1970's demise of the hard top.
When we refer to a "hard top", we're referring to any automobile that doesn't have a center "B pillar". The lack of a "B pillar" allowed designers to emulate automobiles with convertible tops. Designers also added vinyl coverings to hardtops to further accent the convertible look. We've never agreed vinyl tops helped make a hard top look even more like a convertible but we do appreciate that some automobiles from years ago looked rather handsome with them. Like our "sky blue hell" 1970 Continental Town Coupe here. Just as with our burnt orange '72 above, this car is hideously, dare we say fiendishly cool despite that cow pusher front end. That's just gawd awful. Thank you for the picture, Old Car Brochures.
Hard tops went the way of streamlining because back in the 1970's the government began imposing all sorts of regulations on automobile manufacturers. They cracked down on emissions, fuel economy and safety. With regards to safety, there was looming legislation, that never came to fruition, that the government was going to impose roll over safety standards for all new cars sold in this country. Believing and or fearing that, The Big Three discontinued convertible production after 1976 and with their belief that their hard tops couldn't withstand a roll over without collapsing on themselves, the pillar less hardtop started disappearing in 1974 on GM cars and Fords starting in 1975. Curiously, Chrysler kept right on building them through 1978.
Lincoln, however, took things a step or two further when they added a pillar to the center of their Continental Town Coupe. They also eliminated the interesting "shoulders" from beneath the C pillar area. This Town Coupe is a 1974.
That, as much as the adding the center pillar, having as much to do with turning what had been an interesting design into something that could be best described as being "dowdy". Our 1977 here, as subjective as this may be, lacking the elan of hard tops. Again, these 1970 vintage Continental Coupes were never gracefully handsome designs but at least they were "cool". Well, they were cool up until 1975.
In fairness, it's the rarest of exceptions where an automobile design gets better looking as designers attempt to freshen or update it. Our Town Coupe here clearly is not that exception. Cadillac's design fared much better when they added center pillars to their Coupe deVille but even those cars pale in comparison, subjective as that is, to their hard top predecessors. Ironically, the pillars had no adverse effect on sales of these "pillared" Continental Town Coupes. Our opinion be darned.
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