Despite Lincoln’s assertion that “the Lincoln look” of 1959 is one of “classic beauty,” there’s no getting around the car’s reception among some Barn Finds readers. No, many do not find them traditionally beautiful, but they are interesting, and perhaps more importantly, they are an interesting artifact of their time. The 1959 that the Lincoln calls to mind is one of hope, of endless progress, of going to the moon and Mars and beyond, and if one looks at it from that perspective, it tends to soften one’s viewpoint. Or maybe not. But regardless of how you feel about the big unibody Lincolns of 1958-60, Zappenduster was kind enough to send this one our way. It’s an 82,000-mile Continental in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, that has spent almost a month on craigslist with a $13,499 price tag.
The Mark IV Continental was virtually the dictionary definition of a luxury car, as Lincoln loaded it down with almost every conceivable amenity as standard equipment, including a power seat, power windows, power vent windows, power rear glass, power steering and brakes, whitewall tires, and “Travel Tuner” radio, among other things. Because of this, and because of the Lincoln’s massive unit body structure, the Continental punished the scales to the tune of 5,220 pounds, according to the brochure. In addition to those standard features, this example has working air conditioning, power locks, and power antennas.
With all that weight, the Lincoln uses every one of the 350 horsepower and 490 lb.-ft. of torque produced by the 430-cubic-inch MEL V8. In an effort to increase fuel mileage, the subsequent 1960 model was demoted to a two-barrel carburetor, but why not live it up and take the extra power if you’re in the market for a big classic Lincoln? The seller says that the car runs and drives, but unfortunately, the interior is showing every one of its 66 years, so some upholstery work at the very least will be in order, and that will not be cheap.
The seller advertises the Lincoln as having “nice patina,” and that’s probably true. With a new battery, new exhaust, a recored radiator, new tires, all new brakes (including a new master cylinder, wheel cylinders, shoes, and lines), and new shocks, this is a car you could go out and enjoy right now. Unfortunately, that’s the trouble with an old luxury car; the seller has assuredly spent a small fortune making it run and drive dependably, but all anyone cares about is the paint and interior. And that’s probably why it’s languished on craigslist for so long. Maybe it’s already sold, but if not, it’s possible that the owner simply wants to get out from underneath it and may entertain reasonable offers. Maybe it’s worth finding out if you, like me, like these big old Lincolns.
Nice informative writeup Aaron. Always thought these were some “strangely beautiful” automobiles. The flatness of the hood, roof and decklid. Just look at the detail of that fender skirt with 3 pieces of trim and a body line! Then the 6 taillights and 6 points out back resembles a fireworks show. From the provided shot, looks like the back seat is in pretty good shape. Recover the front seat and drive this mammoth beauty as she is!
I agree with you Cooter. For all the large flat surfaces, theres a lot of beautiful touches too, like the fender skirts detail like you mentioned.
It looks like a very decent car, and the price seems pretty fair. A lot of mechanical work has been done, so it seems to be road-ready. Buff out the paint and live with the interior for a while, it would be an awesome cruiser.
…And don’t forget the 2 bags of spring loaded clothespins you’ll have to attach to the fuel line from the fuel pump to the carb to
keep it from vapor locking. After all, it IS a Ford product and they are prone to vapor lock on hot Summer days. FOMOCO didn’t
solve the problem until 1979 when they put electric fuel pumps
in the car’s gas tanks to keep them running more reliably. Other than that, yeah, I like the car because it reminds me of the
steel grey ’59 Premier 4-door hardtop I had in highschool. A deck lid big enough to land a Piper Cub on, a cabin the size of
your living room. What more could you possibly want?
My pre-79 Fords never had that problem. But my GM products did. Weird how that goes.
My Mopars would lock in the Tampa heat, until I switched to non-ethanol gas.
Like one of the other responders, our family owned a number of Fords prior to 1979, in Phoenix, Arizona no less, and never once had vapor lock. The vagaries of cars I guess.
I Had 2 Mustangs A 1966 And A 1967 My Parents Had A Brand New 1966 Mustang And A 1973 Lincoln Continental None Of These Cars Ever Vapor Locked. Have No Idia What You Are Talking About.
My 69 ford pickup has run 56 years without ever vapor locking here in Texas. Too bad they don’t show the front end, these still had the diagonal headlights didn’t they?
@Daniel Harris
Yes, Daniel, the ’58, ’59 & ’60 all had the diagonal headlights.
The ’58s were “enclosed ” and separated from the grill. The ’59 and ’60 were part of the grill but still canted.
The 1958 with the 4bbl was one of the fastest cars of 1958,why they would plop a tiny 2bbl on for 1959 in an era noone cared about economy is beyond me..lol..I always liked these because they looked so out there,i appreciate being different(not Pontiac Aztec different..i’m not that crazy :P )
Beautiful age for Lincoln. There is a lot of the proposed Packard design there. I liked them!
Not my favorite year Lincoln, but this one may be the exception. Love that is a 2 Dr coupe and has the rear breezeway option, along with all the other ones listed. So many important mechanicals have been rebuilt, especially all the brakes and the AC works too. I’d enjoy it as is as a driver survivor and the front upholstery wouldn’t bother me until it got done.
No matter if you love it or hate it, it’s a beautiful work of art in a 6000lb package!
That rear window puts me in mind of the Mercs with the Breezeway, was kinda hoping this would be how this one would work. Alas
Mercury inherited the Breeze Way roof after Lincoln restyling in 61.
Not sure how Mercury inherited the Breezeway rear window when Mercury had it first to begin with on the 57 Turnpike Cruiser.
cool Lincoln. nice survivor. i would fix the seat clean it up and drive it
One opinion:
like justa bout all lincolns but this one (3rd gen?)
just 3 yrs @ end of 50s -1960. The single flaw in
over 80 yrs production…
and there’s no accounting for fashion. Not like
math or others, just ‘style preference’. An odd duck
No?
That is one terrific badass of a car. I think the seller did themselves a disservice by not including a full view of that most sinister of front ends; I love those diagonally canted quad headlights so much.
Take a clue from Australia and remove the rear trunk lid, line the interior with some diamond plate and make it into a Ute. Not a museum piece, so OK to mess with it.
Charlie I agree. The “C” pillar is strange to start with. So, why not? The rear tail gate modification would take a bit of doing. But it would be a cool Ute. When these came out a neighbor had one. I was but a young lad. The rear glass fascinated me. The rest of the car, not so much
Charlie, it may ok to do that UTE restomod with a lowly Fairlane, but not a Lincoln is this condition. It would be sacrilegious.
How did they make such enormous pieces of sheet metal so flawlessly flat?
I’m liking this behemoth. I wouldn’t have a problem driving it as is. I’d certainly check out all those power accessories for functionality. I haven’t seen one of these in the wild in a long time. GLWTS.
Even if the restoration is not the best this example of American luxury will out live any human on the planet. It’s destined to grace some museum somewhere in the world.
That’s a clean rig.
Andrew, my knowledge of Ford products was given to me by hanging out with a lot of older mechanics when I was a 12 year old Motorhead. The mechanics I
ran with ranged in age from their
30s to their late 60s. And to a man, they’d all faced a vapor locking Ford st one time or another. And the clothespin fix
seemed to be the only real solution they had back then. Wood is a very porous material that soaks up heat and dicipates
it through it’s pores and drawing the heat AWAY from the fuel ⛽
lines which keeps them from becoming super heated and vaporizing the fuel BEFORE it gets to the carb. Add to the vapor lock issue, putting the distributor up front was another way to kill your Ford after you ran
the car through a mud puddle or
On slushy streets in Winter ❄️ My
Late ex BIL had a ’61 Ford wagon
that quit running after he drove it
through a puddle on the way home 🏡 from work. So if vapor lock 🔒 didn’t get you, a wet distributor certainly would. Granted, not all Fords vapor locked, but enough of them did over the years to give their owners a major headache. I guess that’s why Dad put Mom in
a well maintained pre owned Cadillac. Back then, a Cadillac was the best used car buy out there. And yes, I have owned 2
Lincolns over the years and clothes pinned the fuel lines on
both of them. Wished I’d kept the
’63 4-door convertible. Hi Angel 😇! Long time no see! You missed out on a really nice Eldorado and a ’72 Olds Custom Cruiser wagon too. How ’bout that young lady at the Caddy Girl
Garage!! I love watching her videos 📸 and I think of you every
time she brings in a new Cadillac
to work on. That ’60 4-door hardtop sure looks great for what it is. And that black ’59 Coupe DeVille has you written all over it!
Hey Ken,
Yes, I’ve seen her videos several times. Reminds me a little of myself when I had money.
I love these Lincolns as most people hate them. Too big to be unibody. And just plain ugly with the canted headlights, blah, blah, blah. I like them. But I’ve always been a Cadillac girl and never gave Lincoln much attention. Even when I owned my 1962 Continental 4 door convertible. Same with Imperial. And I owned a ’71.
I do remember years ago seeing a picture of I think it was a 1960 on a used car lot. The price on the window was $199.00.
This had to be the 70s or early 80s.
Always kick myself for not buying these land yachts when they were 10 to 12 years old when they were at their cheapest. But, even living on a five acre farm with out buildings I had no place to put them.
The Olds Custom Cruiser will end up in my driveway one of these days. I did have a 1973 Chevrolet Caprice Estate Wagon with the power clamshell tailgate. Loved that car. Traded the Imperial in for it.
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
In My 1966 Mustang It Was Raining Out Hard And I Hydroplaned In The Rain And Went Up The Center Divider Hit The Turn Signal With My Quarter Pannel. Never Had My Distributor Get Wet. Also Went To Pismo Beach In Norther CA And Drove On The Water And The Beach Distributor Did Not Get Wet.
You got lucky Andrew. It depended a lot on the engine your pride and joy came with. The problems of which I speak
occured mostly with the first generations of Ford V-8. The flathead, the Y-blocks, (239, 272,
292, 312) and the FE units. (332,
352, 390, 406, 427, 428, 429, 460,
and 462s) and the MEL units (383, 410, and 430s) also had these problems. Putting the distributor on the very front of the
engine was just asking for trouble
as moisture always seemed to find a way under the cap and drown out the points and kill the
engine. And Chrysler wasn’t exempt from this either. Many of
my old time mechanic friends used to tell me stories about ’40s
and ’50s MoPars that had ignition
issues where moisture would kill
an engine or it wouldn’t start at all. And that was the reason Chrysler sales suffered in those years. And it didn’t get any better
for them when they brought out
electronic ignitions in ’72. Travel across a set of railroad tracks, and your car would stall out. You had to get out of the car, go under
the hood, and reconnect the module by plugging it back into the system. And if that wasn’t
enough, there were stories going
around about how the system would shut itself down and disabled the car if the guy behind
you picked up his mike and started talking on his CB radio! Boy, am I glad I didn’t buy that ’77
Chrysler Newport from a family
friend who was desperate to get rid of that car for the reasons I just mentioned. That thing was a
rolling nightmare that wound up
being scrapped. At least that’s how it was in the Midwest where I grew up. The climate up there
would cause a whole host of problems for drivers in that part of the country. And yeah, I was there for most of it. You survived it by knowing which cars had what quirks and you acted accordingly.
Sorry, but I’d rather have the distributor up front on a Ford, because it’s much easier to work on than the GMs that were crammed I the back against the firewall. Especially if you still use points. I’ve switched to Petronix modules, so that’s much easier now. Thankfully, I’ve never had any problems with water getting into my Fords or Mercurys distributor.
Owned the first Dodge Caravan, an ’84, with the 2.2 4 cylinder. It would stall out when wet, even in the first 50,000 miles of an eventual 200,000 plus. Dealer could never figure out why. Had two cars so just ended up not driving it on rainy or snowy days, and when I had to, stayed out of the spray from the vehicles in front. Remedy was hair dryer on air inlet to computer under hood. Was towed several times, once in heated garage for a half hour or so, it would start and run again, even without hair dryer trick. Owned 4 more of these over 30 years but with the V6, and never a problem.
Craigslist ad has EXPIRED.
Wonder if it sold. Would have been a cool cruiser.