Hi, folks – let’s try this again. On my last post about this car, my 1966 Lincoln Continental Coupe, I threw it out there at the last minute that I was going to sell it in the last part of the post and it has created sort of a Lincoln-sized monster. This car looks gorgeous in photos, but it does need a fair amount of deferred maintenance work to bring it back to its once cushy, quiet ride. It also needs work on its beautiful body to fix the dings and scratches that have been touched up over the last few decades by the previous owner; who, by the way, is a heck of a nice guy. This one is worth it, though. It can be found on eBay in St. Paul, Minnesota with a current bid of $4,000. Let’s dig a little deeper into this baby in full disclosure to point out what the next owner will be getting, and won’t be getting. There are quite a few photos on the eBay link if anyone wanted to see them.

Let’s start with what the next owner won’t initially be getting. They won’t be getting a 100% perfect daily driver. They won’t be getting a quiet, luxurious riding Lincoln Continental. This car had a slight leak on the right side exhaust manifold, or the flange where it connects to the exhaust, and it tick, tick, ticks. A Lincoln ought never to tick, as no Lincoln owner said, ever. It really brings this car down a few notches for me, it sounds somewhat like a beater which it should not even remotely be in the category of. It’s such an elegant car that once had such a fantastic, floating, quiet ride.

Speaking of ride, I had one of the steering drag links changed but there still seems to be some play in the suspension and some clunking in the rear. I’m assuming that all four shocks are in need of updating and I would do that if I were keeping it. I had dreams about this car in the time after buying it from the former owner in New Jersey. I thought that it would be as luxurious and quiet and smooth and effortless to drive as my former 1973 Buick 225 was, or even better, my dad’s old 1970 Oldsmobile 98. It is not. It wanders on the road a bit and I’m not sure if it’s due to the 30-year old “new” Montgomery-Ward bias-ply tires or something else. I’m guessing that once new radial tires are fitted it’ll help a lot with that issue. And, I would want to check and maybe update all of the bushings and things like that so it’s as tight as it was when new, or as close to that as possible.

I have not crawled under this car but the shop that had it for two months, while they waited for the water pump to come back from being rebuilt, said that it was rock solid – but you can see surface rust under there. I don’t know how long this car was driven before it was put into storage in 1980 but it could have had 14 years on east coast roads and there should be surface rust if that’s the case. There are 65,570 miles on this car and it needs someone like Howard A to be its care-taker, someone with the experience, skill, and a place to work on it to bring it back to where it should be. (hint-hint)..

This Lincoln has the automatic climate control, sort of a precursor to the modern one that you may have in your vehicle. You just set a temperature and push a button as to where you want the air to be directed and it’ll keep it there until you change something. The AC compressor engages but it doesn’t sound as quiet as it should be and I’m worried about it being low on oil… as they say, and I didn’t want to run it for as long as it took to see if it got ice cold. I’m assuming that after 51 years, it’ll “need charged”, if not need more than that. There were some good comments on the post the other day about how to possibly remedy this system from geomechs and Rustytech.

You can see that the dash will need some polishing, if that’s even possible to do without removing the tiny, painted font for the radio and HVAC controls at the same time. Yes, that’s an 8-track player! And, the switch on the top of the radio is to raise or lower the power antenna, which works like a charm. This car also has a “Motorola Vibrasonic” unit attached under the dash, but I’ve never tried, it. I’m not even sure what it is, some sort of reverb, I’m assuming? One of you will know. The long light below the dash in the above photo is a map light that you push in to turn it on or off, but the bulb is burned out and I can’t figure out how to change it or take it apart. The transmission works and it should be silky smooth, but it’s slow to engage and I’m assuming that it has 40-50 year old fluid and filter and those should be serviced, flushed, changed, adjusted, and whatever else you’d normally do on a car that has been sitting for decades. I spent $2,600 just to have the belts and hoses changed, have the cooling system flushed, get the water pump rebuilt, and have one steering drag link changed. I travel a lot and I don’t have room to work on this car in our garage and the storage unit where I keep it (at $230 a month) doesn’t allow cars to be worked on there, so I had no choice but to bring it to a shop.

These are odd photos to show, but some of them don’t show up on the eBay listing. This car has original carpet, as you can see, and I’m embarrassed that I didn’t take the time to “toothbrush clean” the pedals and the vinyl portion of the carpet before taking the photos!

I’m assuming that here is where some of the trouble is emanating from as far as the power locks that hiss but don’t operate, and why a couple of the windows aren’t going down. On the post from a couple of days ago, a lot of folks had great info on this car, including 64 bonneville who mentioned that the power windows are pin-connector type and a good cleaning of those connections may be what it needs. Both doors close like new without a hint of any sag what so ever. No lie, they are rock solid. There is only one outside mirror on this car and if there was ever a vehicle made on the planet earth that should have a passenger side outside mirror, this is it! The first thing I do with my vehicles, usually, is to put those little stick-on convex mirrors on the outside mirrors for seeing who’s in the lane next to you, but I never really had a chance to enjoy and drive this car and I haven’t done that yet.

There are so many things that are close to being like new on this car that maybe that’s why I’m so disappointed in the things that need work, like the exhaust manifold and transmission service and shocks, etc. I should just be happy with the good things, which are many. It really would be a fun car to tinker with and get all of those things fixed, starting with tires and transmission service, and then drive it as a person fixes everything else.

The supposedly rare carpeted spare tire cover with the perfect embossed Lincoln portion is still in the trunk.

As is what I’m assuming is the original jack, under a vinyl fabric flap on the right side in the trunk. Hagerty lists a #4 fair car as being valued at $7,700 and a #3 good car as being valued at $14,800. Right in-between those two numbers is $11,250 and I’m asking $9,500 given that it needs tires, and it has the exhaust manifold and/or flange leak, and it probably needs shocks who knows what other suspension bushings or other work, and then there’s the body and paint to make like new again.

Back to the exterior for a minute. As was pointed out in the original Barn Finds post in June, and by J.C. in the recent post, these are not 1966 wheel covers, they’re from an early-70s Lincoln. I just missed out on an eBay auction for a full set of 1966 wheel covers for $200 but, as always, I was traveling and I missed the end of the auction. The tires look great but they’re Montgomery-Ward bias-ply tires from the Reagan era, so they “need replaced”, as they say. I’m sad at how little time that I’ve had to spend with this car or any of the others that I have. I used to do everything from u-joints, brakes, oil changes, even fixing an AC system once, but I’m out of town so much now that I haven’t had time to do much with this car other than pay for storage and have it sit there. What a waste of a once in a lifetime opportunity to own a car like this. I have several other vehicles, most of them vintage Japanese vehicles, and this 1966 Lincoln Continental Coupe is certainly in a different league.

The previous owner said that the car was painted about 30+ years ago and there are a couple of areas that are showing some former repair, which I’m assuming is due to rust. Right behind the left front wheel is the biggest one, shown above. There is also a tiny spot in front of the left rear wheel shown in the photo of the wheel.

On the bottom of the passenger door there’s a crease. A paintless dent repair technician thought that it could be taken out but since it isn’t original paint he couldn’t guarantee that the paint wouldn’t be messed up in the process. This car deserves a full, high-quality bodyshop treatment and high-end paint job. You can see orange peel in the paint and the hood is dull. I thought about trying to get it in shape but it really needs to be fixed and repainted by a quality shop. As far as an asking price, I was hoping for $9,500 to try to take care of a couple of months of the storage costs and what I have in to it. I paid $890 in shipping to get it here from New Jersey in June and then the repairs, tax, license, title transfer, insurance, etc.

Here’s a good example of the paint touch-ups on this car, on the driver’s door and just about everywhere else.

I’ve had a lot of interest in the car, a gentleman from Sweden even offered to buy it if I would do that. I have only sold one car on eBay and I don’t sell or flip cars for profit.. ha.. as much as I would love to do that. I just like tracking down rare and interesting vehicles and I like owning them for a while. Sometimes they stay and sometimes, in two cases now, they go. I just wanted to go over this car again with everyone and let any potential buyers know that this isn’t currently a jump-in-and-drive-down-Route-66 car, it needs lots of maintenance things done in order for it to be drop-dead reliable and to be as quiet and smooth as a 1966 Lincoln Continental Coupe deserves to be.