You can’t get much for $1,500 these days, certainly not a nice-looking luxury car. This 1985 Lincoln Continental Mark VII LSC is about four decades old now and is vintage enough to be older than a decent percentage of Barn Finds readers, but it still seems “newish” to me. The seller has this Lincoln posted here on craigslist in one of my favorite cities: Tucson, Arizona. They’re only asking $1,500 for this one and here is the original listing.

There are a couple of caveats with this “cheap” luxury car: the first one is that the seller says it has been sitting for around a year, but it’ll start right up with a jump. The other caveat makes the $1,500 asking price make sense: they think it needs a headgasket. Ok, that’s a biggie, but for most Barn Finds readers, this is barely a weekend project, and you can do some upgrades while you’re under the hood. This is the Luxury Sports Coupe (LSC) version so it could be worth it.

It also appears that the “Goodyear-designed rubber air springs”, at least in the front, have started leaking or sagging, it’s sitting fairly low and I don’t think it’s because it was modified to look like that. Add that to the list, but still… $1,500! Ok, the list is adding up, but that’s the problem with knowing someone like Todd Fitch or almost any of the other writers here. They would zip this car into their respective garages and in a couple of days it would be sitting right and running right.

Lincoln named their Mark VII the Lincoln Continental Mark VII in 1984 and 1985 and the Continental name went away for the 1986 model year. They were made until early 1992 and I remember thinking, someday I’ll own that car. As an LSC model, The standard seat inserts would have originally been perforated leather rather than the blue velour seen here, but cloth seats were a no-cost option and maybe those were more appealing to a Tucson buyer than leather. They appear in nice condition both front and back but the interior is showing its age in spots.

Here’s the major wild card, Ford’s 302-cu.in. OHV V8, which would have had 180 horsepower (net) and 260 lb-ft of torque when new. Backed by a four-speed automatic sending power to the rear wheels, this one needs work, according to the seller. Hopefully, it’s as “easy” as a head gasket, they don’t list the mileage so we don’t know how many miles that head gasket has traveled. Hagerty gives a #4 fair-condition value of $4,100 and a #3 good-condition value of $9,800 so there’s a lot of room to do some repairs here. Is this “cheap Lincoln” worth saving?