1980 Lincoln Continental Mark VI - Hot Rod Lincoln

The Ford Motor Company had literal and figurative big brake shoes to fill when they introduced their downsized Continental Mark VI for 1980. The "VI", like the 1980 above I found on Facebook Marketplace, replaced, the 1977 to 1979 Mark V, the largest and best-selling Mark of all time. 

Contemporary road test reviewers weren't enthralled with the new "little-big-car", which, at 216-inches long, 78-inches wide and weighing more than 4,200-pounds, wasn't "small". They did note improvements in handling, braking and packaging, though. They also noted that the VI had as much cabin and trunk space as the V despite being more than a foot shorter, two-inches narrower and being 800-pounds less heavy. Despite the damning with faint praise accolades, and designers following marching orders making sure the VI had every ersatz and baroque bauble and bit the V had, sales of VI in 1980 were approximately half of that of the 1979 Mark V.

So, why did the Continental VI sales implode? It wasn't because the car wasn't as big as the V; we need only to look at the 1976 Cadillac Seville and 1979 Cadillac Eldorado for proof that size only matters so much to luxury car buyers; if the design has the je ne sais quos well-heeled buyers crave, regardless of the size of the vehicle, build it and they will buy it. The problem with the VI is that it looked like a "wannabee" or facsimile of a Mark V as opposed to being its own unique design. 

Say what you will GM hatahs, but the 1979-1985 Cadillac Eldorado looked nothing like the brutes it replaced, and it was the best-selling Eldorado of all time. The relatively diminutive 1976 to 1979 Seville was a watershed of sedan design as well while having little in common with any Cadillac before it. Although you can't argue with their logic, The Ford Motor Company tried to take the "easy way out" and got their trunk hump caught in the trunk lid. 

In a vacuum, though, and this is an easier pill to swallow all these years later, the Mark VI isn't a bad looking car; this one for sale outside Detroit with an asking price of $6,000. Seems a grand or two north of what I'd hit up my ATM for, but you do get a pretty clean VI that's got some interesting easter eggs hidden in it.  

The aftermarket, speed-o-meter blocking, steering column mounted tachometer and full, Autozone-equse gauges tell us something may be stirring under this car's gigantic hood. Seems I didn't snag the only engine picture in the posting (the car has been sold), but it showed the engine this car came from the factory with, either a Ford throttle-body, fuel-injected 302-cubic inch V-8 or 351-cubic inch engine with a "variable-venturi". 2-barrel carburetor. was tossed for the "low-output" version of Ford's 1986 circa, port-fuel injection "5.0" V-8. Big deal, right? 

Poster of the ad claims the engine has Brodix 171cc heads, those are not cheap, Ford Racing lifters, Manley pushrods, JP Performance timing chain and, oh yeah, a 125-horsepower, "cold fusion" wet nitrous kit. Talk about a literal hot-rod Lincoln. 

Not sure why someone would do all that, I wouldn't but I bet this car goes like stink in a straight line. I'd have gone the late 1980's, junkyard Ford Mustang GT "5-Point-Oh" route to make this a "Hot Rod Lincoln" but that's just me.  

Fun facts, all Marks through 1985 cars were technically not "Lincolns" but rather "Continental's". From 1986 through 1999, the "Continental" nameplate was dropped, the then current Continental Mark VII became the "Lincoln Mark VII". Subsequently, the 1993-1999 Mark VIII was the Lincoln Mark VIII. Yes, there was a Continental Mark VI four-door sedan that rode on a three-inch longer wheelbase and was 219-inches long. 

Sales never improved through the VI's truncated production run through 1983. The 1983-1992 Mark VII didn't either for that matter. Same for the 1994-1999 Mark VIII. 

1968 Chevrolet Impala - Resale Red

 

Classic cars are a dicey investment since unlike Wall Street, which, on average, has historically gone up in value, what cars will appreciate has always been a slippery slope. In the end, there's going to be a limit to the lift as well as the cadre of buyers interested in them sadly dwindles. Therefore, if you're buying a "classic" for any reason other than loving the car, it's best to proceed with extreme caution and don't get suckered into buying tempting "resale red" cars like this 1968 Chevrolet Impala Custom Coupe. This popped up on Facebook Marketplace a couple of weeks ago with a relatively low asking price of $23,500. Recently, that asking price was reduced to $19,500. So, something's up. Let's kick its historically incorrect, although very cool BF Goodrich Comp T/A's and see what we can come up with.

First some background. While the Chevrolet Impala Sport Coupe had been around since 1958, the Impala Custom Coupe with the same rear roof line the Caprice coupe had, debuted for 1968. It was little more than a de-contented Caprice coupe Chevrolet charged more for than the Impala Sport Coupe. To-may-toe, toe-mah-toe? Not exactly. 

The Chevrolet Caprice coupe, which debuted in 1966 when the Caprice became its own line, "Caprice" was a trim-level on four-door Impala's in 1965, never got the dramatic swooping fastback the Impala Sport Coupe had. The slope of the Sport Coupe's rear roof for 1967 and 1968, above is a 1968, is so big it looks like it could be a hatchback. For 1969 and 1970, Chevrolet reduced the angle or pitch on it blurring the figurative and literal lines of the rooflines between the Impala Custom and Sport Coupes. The redesigned Impala's for 1971 and beyond are a whole other story I've covered extensively. 

In my opinion, the formal roofline does wonders for the proportions of the design of this vintage of the Impala hard top coupe and gives it better overall balance. It also highlights the distinctive shoulder arches on the top of the rear fenders; you just don't see that type of whimsy on vehicle design these days. Well, I should say, if you do, it's a throwback or homage of sorts to something from the past. 

So, what could be so wrong with this car that the poster of the ad sliced more than 15-percent off what they were originally asking? Well, it's not so much what's "wrong" as what could be righter. Especially at this price point. Sorry, twenty-grand is still twenty grand.  Those buyers with an aversion to risk may surmise that if things could be righter, what else is wronger? 

For starters, this car came from the factory with a vinyl top and whoever painted it or had it painted, did not alter the car so that it looks like it was built originally without one. Note that chrome strip on the bottom of the rear roof line where it meets the body of the car - that would separate where the vinyl roof meets the rest of the car. Looks like this car has a removable hard top. Not a bad look, but when you're asking twenty-grand for a near sixty-year-old car, details matter. 

Also, look at the size of the gap between the chrome trim around the windows - that's to go around the (missing) vinyl top. 

Although rare, these cars were available without a vinyl top and on those cars, like on this '68, there's no chrome trim between the roof and the body. Sorry, I know it's confusing seeing this car is red like our subject car. 

Also, note how much tighter to the body the chrome trim is around the driver's side window glass. It's these little details that separate good paint jobs from great. 

Moving to the interior, and the what-the-hell-is-that continues. Gosh, I haven't seen an after-market floor shifter installed on a factory column shift car in years. I guess it could be worse, they could have left the actual column shifter lever on instead of removing it and leaving the notch for it. Even if this car has a "shifter kit", which is fine if it did, you don't need that after-market floor shifter. Shift kits modify the internal hydraulics of a transmission regardless of where the actual shifting is done. This is silly boy racer stuff. 

1968 Impala Custom Coupes were available with the SS trim package that included bucket seats and a, be still my beating heart, "horseshoe" shifter console (example above). All this stuff, the console, the shifter and the buckets are all available online. The steering column with the shifter-less column a console shifter car would have come with too. Ton of work and added expense to make it all right, but it makes a big difference at resale time. As time marches on, it's becoming more and more important for these cars to be at least as historically correct as possible. Especially if you're asking top dollar for them. 

There are no details in the ad about what may have been done to the "numbers matching", 396 cubic-inch V-8 this car has. Aftermarket valve cover gaskets, headers and massive intake manifold denote "power", but who knows. Seeing the job done on the roof and interior, I wouldn't be surprised if this car is all show and little to no go. 

Personally, while I wouldn't buy this car because of what I've pointed out, and this is what seems obvious to me. Someone may see the value upside in spending $19,000 and then pouring possibly another $3,000 to $4,000 into it. This bought closer to $15,000 makes sense, to the degree it could make sense. You'll still need to do some 'splainin to the boss why you need the checkbook again. Good luck with that. 

1965 Rambler Marlin - BOGO

 

If you're into the offbeat two-fers, well, friend-oh, today, you're in luck. For sale a stone's throw from the old triple-wide out here west of Cleveland, Ohio, we've got a BOGO of sorts here with not one, but two 1965 Rambler Marlins you can take off the seller's hands for $2,000. He will not separate. 

Neither are running but the black one is the "tighter" of the two, the blue one was bought as a "parts car" to help fix up the black car. The owner came to realize he was in over his head and is trying to cut his losses. Be forewarned, though, cars whose manufacturers no longer exist and don't have an underground network of sorts for parts and resources are what we call "orphans", and their owners are, for the most part, on their own. These aren't O.G. Ford Mustangs or another automobile named after a fish, the Plymouth Barracuda. 

So, what were these things that are an odd combination of semi-Ford Mustang cool and '50's sci-fi movie weird? Simply put, the Marlin was American Motors attempt to tap into the burgeoning youth market in the mid-'60's. 

By the early to mid 1960's, American Motors, or AMC, formed in May of 1954 with the merger of the Nash-Kelvinator and Hudson Corporations, had an image problem - their cars were seen as out of touch with the times, dated, dull, and frumpy; Ramblers were for the terminally and unapologetically unhip. My old man had a 1961 Rambler Classic when I was a kid, and I was mortified by it. Especially living in a neighborhood awash in a sea of flashy Chevrolet's, Buick's and Ford's. I can still hear the flaccid blaaat of its soulless six-cylinder engine droning on endlessly, my father's knee on the bottom of the big steering wheel while he used both hands to light a cigar. Yes, while moving with me unbuckled in the front passenger seat. 

Taking a page from Ford and Plymouth's playbook where their "sporty" compacts were built on the chassis of the yeoman like Falcon and Valiant, respectively, AMC built the Marlin using much of their new-for-1964 Rambler American. 

The American was a significant step forward for AMC, stylists eschewing much of the quirk-for-the-sake-of-quirk, oddball-ness that been the hallmark of Ramblers before and after the merger. The new American was dutiful and conventional looking. They were perfectly inoffensive. Perhaps too much so. I'd stop way short of calling them handsome. 

The Marlin had two problems. The first was its styling. Attempting to do a fastback, which was construed as youthful, AMC executives insisted it not only seat six, but the rear seat passengers should also have ample head room; a "3+3" if you will rather than a "2+2". 

To pull that off and be aesthetically pleasing would be a challenge given the diminutive dimensions of the Rambler American. The end result was a rear roofline that's an attempt to be all things to all people, you know what happens when you try to make everyone happy. AMC did little to differentiate the Marlin from the American forward of the doors. 

 

Sorry, a Ford Mustang 2+2, on the left, it ain't. It's not even a Plymouth Barracuda (right) that despite Plymouth not changing much of anything on its Valiant aside from a massive rear windshield, is far more pleasing to look at. 

Although Marlin's had optional 289- or 327-cubic inch AMC V-8 engines, unlike the Americans that were saddled with six-cylinder engines only, Marlin's had the same underpinnings American's had. That meant mushy springs and shocks, slow steering, woeful brakes. Doesn't matter how much the V-8's were, power is nothing without control. 

On our Marlins here, the parts car has AMC's 289 V-8 that at least turns, the black one has a seized up 232-cubic inch six. 

Marlin sales were abysmal. AMC moving just 10,000 or so for 1965, less 5,000 for 1966. 

AMC rebooted it for 1967 basing it on their intermediate sized Ambassador. Despite the larger canvas making the "3+3" concept perhaps the best it could be, it's still "off" in the way 1966 and 1967 Dodge Chargers are, AMC sold a scant 2,500 Marlins for 1967. they, warning, deliberate pun incoming, threw the Marlin back in the water for 1968 and beyond. 

Although I'm not a fan of these cars and most anything American Motors came out with, it would be a shame to see these two Marlins hauled off to the scrapper. Best we can hope for is someone who's got a Marlin they're restoring, and they can use parts off these cars to complete their project. Or get the black one running by any means possible, perhaps even rat-rot it, and call it a day. 

1972 Chevrolet Impala Custom Coupe - Where I Draw the Line

Most two-door, 1972 Chevrolet Impala's I come across these days are Impala "Sport Coupes" not "Custom Coupes" like this one. The only real difference between the two is the rear window; on the Sport Coupes it's rounded, bubble like almost as an homage of sorts to the Impala Sport Coupes of yore. These Custom Coupes have convex rear windows that I prefer.  The difference sounds minute, it's not though when you see Sport and Custom Coupe side by side. 

Poster of the ad for this on Facebook Marketplace is asking $6,000 for it. Rather than get into the weeds about how I don't think it's worth a fraction of that, I'd rather luxuriate in the photographer's serendipitous use of the thin winter sunlight out in Wichita, Kansas. 

The relative darkness puts an additional patina on everything we see. Right down to what's left of the Chevrolet "small block", 400-cubic inch V-8 that hasn't been turned over in forty-years. I've driven Chevrolet's of this vintage with this engine and, everything being relative, they pull these big cars quite well. 

The interior is the big problem here. Ad says it's "mousy". That's a gross if not apt description. This picture is so good you can almost smell the little varmints. They've chewed up much of the wiring too. 

In my opinion, 1972 was the end of the run for the Golden Age of General Motors design that began, in earnest, in 1949. For 1973, federally mandated safety bumpers were required up front that changed the look of all cars, the Chevrolet Impala included and not for the better. Prior to '73, this car included, it seemed designers could do as they please in the interest of sales; after '72, they had to be concerned with pressing matters they never had to deal with before. 

That's why many of us draw the line on what's a "classic car" and what's not at 1972. I know I do. Everything after 1972, with some exceptions, of course, are just cars. 

1978 Cadillac Eldorado - 26 Cents A Pound. Such a Deal.

Here we have what one of the last of the big boys, a super clean, 19,000-mile Cadillac Eldorado from 1978, the year before Cadillac shrink-rayed it. This one here for sale on Marketplace less than an hour southeast of The Old Triple Wide outside Cleveland, Ohio. Asking price is $19,000. Figure a dollar for every mile it's got on it or about 26-cents per pound. Such a deal. 

Poster of the ad claims to be the third owner of this brute and it was in storage for a number of years before they bought it. Sounds like an estate sale or "barn find" to me and they're trying to make some bucks on it. Nothing wrong with that. Unless you're the buyer and you find out afterwards you overpaid for it. Prices on these it what appear to be solid shape pegs this priced fairly. Poster of the ad says it's mostly original and that scares me to some degree. 

Thing is, who'd buy this thing? I'm as "car guy" as they get and a Cadillac man too but even I'd chafe at this thing. It's just too damn big. What's more, I'm past the age of wanting something nostalgic and forgiving its sins. And this car has a lot of sins. It'll handle poorly even if the suspension is up to snuff, be oh-so-difficult to maneuver and families in Kia crossovers will blow by you like you're standing still. Did I mention single-digit gas mileage? It'll run you over a hundred bucks to fill it up. 

To that end, I don't get these cars anymore. I did back in the day, mind you but now I like to have my oldies or weekenders do more for me than just look good. And don't get me wrong, this old boat looks great. I love the color combo. Lovely. That GM grey paint has a tendency to oxidize and turn white, no word if this is a repaint or not. The bumper filler panels are pristine too. 

Under the hood this one has Cadillac's new-for-1977, 425-cubic inch V-8. Making all of 180-net horsepower, again, you're not going anywhere fast in this thing. It'll crank out 320 foot-pounds of torque and with a 2.73:1 drive ratio, it'll pull off the line decently. Thing is that this porker will tilt the scales on the dark side of two-and-a-half tons. Move over, gramps.

Cadillac's first came out with an Eldorado in 1953 to help celebrate their 50th anniversary. More or less a fancied Coupe deVille, in 1967, Cadillac made the Eldorado front-wheel-drive sharing its trick "United Power Plant" with the Oldsmobile Toronado. It was redesigned in 1971, our '78 here is part of that 1971 rebooting. From 1967 to 1970, Cadillac heralded the Eldorado as being a sports-tourer of sorts, the 1971 to 1978 were more like fluffy parade floats. 

 

 

1977 Ford Maverick - The O.G.

This 1977 Ford Maverick popped up on Marketplace recently and is very similar to my 1974 Mercury Comet I had as my first car from February 1982 through June of 1983. The 1971 to 1977 Mercury was a lightly disguised, badge-engineered version of the O.G. Maverick. Here you thought the Ford Maverick was an adorable little trucklet. Nope. Back in my day, this was a Ford Maverick. Now get off my lawn. 

The similarities to my Comet run more than sheet metal deep. The front passenger side floor is rotted out on this car as well, poster of the ad says the driver's side is rotted out too. Imagine my horror when I realized my floors were melting. I first noticed my carpeting would be soaked when it rained, then a friend put his foot through the floor playing air guitar. "Ah, dude, something's wrong with the floor of your car! Yeah. I'll say. Thanks, pal." 

Thing is that my car was all of eight- or nine-years-old when I discovered it was a rust bucket. This thing is knocking on the door of the big five-oh. Good for you, little guy. Although, have to wonder how long those floorboards have been wasted away. Poster of the ad says, euphemistically, "she's rusty but still trusty." 

These fancy cast rims were available on Mavericks and Comets later in the production run, my Comet didn't have them. This car only has them on the front, but he's got two more that don't have tires mounted on them. Speaking of the front, poster of the ad claims the front brake lines need to be replaced. He'll do them for you if you want, no doubt jacking up the already absurd asking price of $3,500 for the whole kit and kaboodle. Good thing the floorboards are rotted out so you can "Fred Flintstone" it if the car won't stop on your way home. 

When Ford first introduced the Maverick in 1969, it was a two-door door only, a four-door built on a chassis with a longer wheelbase was introduced for 1971. Mercury dolled up a Maverick as their Comet starting in 1971 rolling it out with two- and four-doors, there was no Maverick\Comet station wagon. Useful as the four-door was, all the design charms of the two-door went over the proverbial fence. 

Maverick sales were strong at first, Ford moving nearly 600,000 of them in an elongated 1970 model year. Before Ford introduced the similarly sized Granada in 1975, a car built on the same chassis that had DNA in it going back to 1960, they sold more than 250,000 of them each year. Ford sells maybe half that number of the current compact truck Maverick each year these days.