About a half-dozen years after this 1979 Lincoln Versailles was made, I had a Chrysler LeBaron convertible, which I always referred to as a K-car with chrome. Is this Versailles a Ford Granada or Mercury Monarch with chrome, or is there more to these cars than that? The seller has this one listed here on eBay in St. Louis, Missouri and they have a $5,995 buy-it-now price listed, or you can make an offer.
The Versailles’ resemblance to the Granada and Monarch is unmistakable. Although, for the last two years of production, 1979 and 1980, the Versailles received a more formal upright roofline and a half-vinyl top, in classic 1970s landau style. You can see some color variation on the bottom of the two passenger side doors of this car, unfortunately. I’d want to try to correct that. Although, this photo shows what appears to be a two-tone in Light Champaign and a similar color just a shade off from that, that wasn’t an option in 1979. The two-tone colors would have been much more of a contrast.
Hagerty is at $6,900 for a #3 good condition car and $11,000 for a #2 excellent car so maybe a little paintwork wouldn’t break the bank on this example after all. The Versailles was made from 1977 to 1980 and 1979 was the best year for sales, at just over 21,000, but it was still a long way off from its biggest rival, the Cadillac Seville, which had about double the sales.
The optional Champaign leather seats appear to be in good condition with the usual cracking and aged look. The seller says that they have been “refinished”, although I’m not sure what that means. Literally, as in dyed or spray-painted like you’d see in a YouTube video? The back seat looks great as they almost always do. The seller says that this car has a new headliner, the vinyl top has some splitting, and they mention some paint issues and there is just one rust spot.
By 1979, the 302 V8 was it and this one has Ford’s 302-cu.in. OHV V8 with 130 horsepower and 237 lb-ft of torque. This one has a new heater core, also, and they say that it runs and drives as smoothly as a Lincoln should. Any thoughts on this Versailles? What’s your offer on this one?
Good line Scotty, “a Granada or Monarch with chrome.” The Versailles reminds me that car manufacturers are in business to make money; cars are just the ‘vehicle’ to accomplish that. This is true for essentially all producers of consumer goods, right? (My employer drove that concept into my head early in my career.)
So….. Ford management must have figured that there was a way to make money by over-dressing a Granada and making it a Lincoln. As long as the selling price exceeded the cost of all the frou-frou plus ancillary costs, why not try. Car guys and gals like us may not like this concept, but it works (see: Toyota/ Lexus).
As for this car, it looks like it is in good shape. Something different for Cars & Coffee.
True, the purpose is to make money. Presumably by selling product. Ideally in an equitable exchange – value for value.
In the case of the Versailles, what was being sold was image. The underlying product wasn’t inherently bad; only plebian and low-cost. Granadas were reworked Falcons; but offered a reasonable alternative to the low end of the mass market.
Cadillac, trying for a “small” (not really) model, started with the X-body – of convenience, as it took less time and money than a clean-sheet approach. Ford, with less money to spend, started with the intact Granada – literal badge-engineering, with modest front-end tweaking.
Unnoticed in the rebadging, was that the Granada roofline made the back seat unsuitable for all but children for any period of time. That led to the awkward landau top, done by ASF.
This example: The price is right; the hardware bulletproof; but beyond Sunday cruise-ins, it’s hard to imagine what to do with it. This was not Ford’s better idea.
I think the K-car comparison is fair. If you look at the Chrysler M bodies, they were using a single platform for the Dodge Diplomat, Plymouth Gran Fury, and Chrysler Fifth Avenue. They needed a luxury offering, but had to scale back to dig themselves out of financial disaster. Adding a brougham trim to an economy platform is not new. I imagine the Versailles was just Ford’s attempt to do the same. They just beat Chrysler to it.
6K seems pretty reasonable for this car, it looks pretty clean. And the Granada was a decent car.
$6,000 isn’t a lot of money for a Lincoln, but it’s quite a bit for a Granada.
So now that we’ve picked on Ford, let’s pick on GM. How bout the Cadillac Cimarron? Nothing but a chromed over Cavalier. They’ve all done badge engineering .
Nice write up Scotty. Two Versailles in the same week!
Back in the day, we’d look for these in the junkyards. 9” rear with factory disc brakes. $25.00 all day long.
I’d like to see Matthew McConaughey do a Lincoln commercial driving this.
This Versailles has more than a little extra chrome enhancement, and the coach-style half-vinyl roof also indicates extra dealer or aftermarket enhancement.
It’s obviously not the case here, but the fastest street racers around St. Louis when I was growing up in the early- and mid-’70s were pimped-out Lincolns, Chryslers, Buicks and Caddys with max-effort big blocks on heavy hits o’squeeze. To the point where I retired my brother’s 340 Duster and went with an LTD coupe on a heavy nitrous habit.
If I’da found this car back then, I’da been all over this.
No, that was done to the Versailles after its first year.
Prospects complained of no head-room in the rear; so a deal was worked with American Sunroof to put that non-folding landau top on back. That plus the awkward door tops.
This thing really was a monument to complete lack of product planning.
There was something else besides the looks that plagued the Versailles, especially the first three years. The engines were fitted with a variable-venturi carburetor, which was probably the worst mechanical mistake Ford made after WW2, until the Tempo came along. Those carburetors were one of many fuel-economy attempts to address the oil embargos and were very iffy at best. So, you have a gussied-up, humpbacked Monarch that is likely to leave you stranded anywhere at any time. I believe they remedied that with a TBI unit in 1980, similar to the one used in the other Lincoln models of that year…but, unless a prior owner already addressed that design flaws, this car is likely not helped in that regard.
What is really confounding was that they revived that piece-o’-junk carburetor in the Versailles’ replacement, the Continental, in ’82!!
doesn’t look like a 44k mile car to me. Too much interior wear; paint and top looks like it spent a lot of time out doors
I lived through the malaise era so understand they were trying to market a proven midsized Granada car with all of the best equipment standard or optional to meet CAFE and appeal to Lincoln owners trying to get better mileage than the existing fleet of Town Cars and Marks. It was a Seville alternative so there was a niche market already. The problem I see was that it was smaller but had big car sloppy power steering at a time when its own low budget Pinto had rack and pinion steering and elements of the Versailles suspension were Falcon era parts. The Seville/Versailles size class leader was a midsized Mercedes that excelled in all driving dynamics. The comparision to the K car is an excellent example of badge engineering but the K cars were front wheel drives built off a downsized Dart class compact size chassis. The Granada and Versailles never were front wheel drive models.
They were good cars,the problem was it was no Lincoln ever.get rid of the trunk hump and you have a nice lux version of the Granada,would have done better as that.
The the author: The word “champagne” does NOT have the letter “i” in it.
WOW! I didn’t think that there were any left. We bought these by the gross back in the 80s. This and the Granada ESS for one thing and one thing only….the prop valve and the disc brake nine inch rear which bolted right under a 67 68 Mustang. I don’t think it was a bad car. I drove them and thinking back sadly they were kind of nice. All cars have engineering conundrums some worse than others. I still have a Fairmont from this time Era I love. I would ride this daily and h#[[ six grand for a car you can service yourself, get every mechanical part for next to nothing is a godsend in today’s world and this stuff is caveman easy to work on, just keep lots of little vacuum hoses around and replace them one at a time and you’ll be just fine.
This Lincoln is nothing but a glorified Ford Granada. You might as well just buy a Granada. I see why Cadillac beat Lincoln and sales back then Ford had no vision and they were taking their cheaper models and glorifying them into Lincoln’s Harriet I take a caddy any day over a Lincoln
Cadillac did the same thing, Einstein, I’ll take the Lincoln any day.