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Automotive Industry

Continental Drift

Automotive Industries, June, 1999 by Lindsay Brooke

Lincoln's stylish Mark II had two goals -- to be the best luxury car, and launch a unique brand. But high costs killed the dream.

Today it's one of the most collectible American cars of the 1950s, fetching auction prices around $40,000 for the best examples. When it was first unveiled to the public at the 1955 Paris Auto Show, Lincoln's Continental Mark II was the two-door coupe that Ford intended to be nothing less than the new standard of U.S. automotive luxury.

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Proposed in 1952 and approved for production a year later, the Mark II was the brainchild of William Clay Ford, who at 30 years old was the new head of Ford's Special Product Operations. Like his father Edsel, who himself had spearheaded the original '39 Lincoln Continental, Bill Ford led the top-secret Mark II program from start to finish. He was deeply involved in every facet, directing design, overseeing production plans and devising the marketing strategy.

Ford had just one brief for the new model: to make it the world's best luxury car, cost and profit be damned. Exclusivity was paramount, so the program shared only handful of components with other Ford products. The major "off the shelf' item was Lincoln's 6.0L V-8, at the time the largest-displacement U.S. passenger car engine. For Mark II use, the big ohv engine was blueprinted (hand-built to precise factory specs), giving it a near-300 horsepower rating.

The separate ladder-type chassis, designed on a 126-inch wheelbase, was engineered to make the car's roof line as low as possible. Overall height was just 56 inches (low-slung for the period) yet providing good seat height and visibility.

Mass was virtually a design cue in the `50s, and the Mark II was no exception. In production trim, it weighed 5,100 pounds -- as much as many big SUVs today. That didn't matter, of course. Styling was the Mark IFs signature. Bill Ford aimed to recapture the elegance of his father's original Continental. He enlisted Ford's body development studio, directed by the great Gordon Buehrig (designer of the Cord 810 and other classics), and pitted it against four of America's top independent styling shops, in a competition to produce the best Mark II. The five studios each built a scale model, all to identical scale. Each model was painted the same color, and all were presented anonymously to Ford's five-member board of directors. One by one, the board members scrutinized the models. Without any communication among them, they cast a unanimous vote for the Buehrig studio's design.

A full-scale clay design was frozen two years before Job One. The clean, unfettered form was so strong, so right from the start (even with its true "continental" spare) that no revisions were made. The Mark II entered production just as Bill Ford and Buehrig's designers had envisioned it. But the clean-sheet brief led to numerous cost issues. The body was built by Mitchell-Bentley, a specialty shop in Ionia, Mich. The hood ornament was reputed to be so difficult to manufacture that it was eventually sourced from a defense contractor. Its price was said to rival the car's immense grille.

The car was loaded with standard equipment -- power steering and brakes, electric windows, stereo radio, vacuum-actuated antenna, full leather, tinted glass. Seatbelts and A/C were the two main options.

Bill Ford announced his offspring at a Lincoln Owners' Club meeting in late 1954. He noted that with this new model, Continental would become a marque unto itself and depart the Lincoln fold. It became a separate division within Ford. A year later, the Mark II officially debuted at Pads.

But today's classic was hardly yesterday's smash hit. Priced at $9,700, the Mark II was the most expensive American car of 1956. Ford reportedly lost at least $1,000 on each one.

In fact, the car bombed. Only 2,500 Mark II's were built for 1956, and just 444 for 1957, the final production year. Not coincidentally, Ford folded Continental back into Lincoln two years later. And arguably, since then the brand hasn't produced a car that even approached "world's best" status. Perhaps the 2000 LS will change that.

Automotive Industry

Continental Drift

Automotive Industries, June, 1999 by Lindsay Brooke

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