What in the name of Sam Hill is this? Some sort of Packard or Imperial? Nope. Try again. Studebaker? Henry J? Kaiser? Hudson? Wrong again, hubcap breath. It's a 1956 Lincoln Premiere. This lavender creme puff popped up on Marketplace recently with an asking price of, you better sit down in your color coordinated leather seats, $35,500.
The Premiere was new for 1956 and was Lincoln's top-of-the-line model sub-planting the "Capri" at the top of Lincoln's two-model lineup. Going back to 1952, the Capri was the end all and be all Lincoln, what they called the Cosmopolitan was their "entry-level" model. I don't know what was worse; the design of the cars or what they called them.
Not only was the Premiere a far better name for a car, but the cars themselves where the best-looking things Lincoln came up with since Edsel Ford introduced the first Continental in 1939.
Lincoln had a tough go of it in the 1950's. Cadillac ate not only their lunch, but their breakfast, dinner, midnight snacks and Sunday brunch. Lincoln sold only 317,371 cars from 1950 through 1959 meanwhile Cadillac sold 1.2 million. That was because Cadillac owned the narrow, domestic luxury car niche through economies of scale, marketing and styling. That they also had an image of engineering innovation although that was beginning to wane as features once exclusive to Cadillac began to trickle down to "lesser" GM makes and models. Lincoln did themselves no favors either in the years after the war coming with designs that looked exactly like what they were - tarted up Mercury's. Perhaps the inverse was true; not that it mattered. This car shares its underpinnings with the Mercury Montclair.
The Lincoln Motor Company was founded by Henry Leland in 1917, somewhat ironically, he also founded Cadillac but was forced out after General Motors purchased Cadillac from him in 1908. Things didn't go as well for Mr. Leland the second time around and with his new company all but bankrupt, Henry Ford bought it from him for a song in 1922 and put his son Edsel in charge of it.
Lincoln's first post-war designs were, frankly, especially in comparison to Cadillac, a tad out there and not in a good way. While they did have some rather handsome and memorable designs before the war, after the war was a different story.
In my opinion, their best-looking model of the 1950's were these cars. Designer Bill Schmidt, who drew up the fabulous if not over-the-top 1955 Lincoln Futura concept car, recycled much of the Futura when he penned these cars. Save for the front end that's nothing if not ordinary, there's not a bad line on it.
This '56 Lincoln is, without question, the only Lincoln made between 1945 and 1960 I'd seriously consider although I chafe at the asking price for this one. Funny, I wouldn't think twice about dropping that much on a '56 Cadillac in this condition. The wife might have a hard to approving that purchase order, though.
The Marketplace ad is light on the details; there's no information as to how original this car is or not. I can't imagine it is all that original, looks like someone dropped a ton restoring it and is now attempting to recoup their losses. Or expenditures.
That person won't be me. Will it be you?
No comments:
Post a Comment