J. P. Cavanaugh’s (2024) recent ode to the 1969 Lincoln Continental got me thinking: What if the 1970 redesign returned to the more compact size of the groundbreaking 1961-63 models? What might that have looked like? And how might a downsized Continental have done in the marketplace?
Before getting into the particulars I should add that the goal wouldn’t have been to merely recreate the so-called “Kennedy Continentals,” but to better realize their potential. The cars had groundbreaking styling and more sensible exterior dimensions, but an exceptionally heavy body destroyed the possibility of better gas mileage. In addition, the Lincoln’s handling did not make the most of its smaller size. Finally, the Continental’s space efficiency was so bad that it was cramped despite external dimensions similar to low-priced, big cars.
1970 redesign was a chance to do the Continental right
For starters, a meaningful amount of weight was cut simply by switching back from a unitized body and chassis to separate body-on-frame construction. Even though 1970 Continental models were slightly larger, they weighed around 260 pounds less than their predecessors. Weight could have been further reduced by adopting the 1961-63 Continental’s smaller external footprint.
Let’s take the real 1970 Continental and cut its wheelbase six inches to 121 and reduce its length a foot to 213 inches. That would have given the Lincoln the same wheelbase as the big Ford but a four-inch shorter length.
Although the downsized Continental’s dimensions would have been close to those of 1961-63 models, the car would have been roomier — both in terms of passenger accommodations as well as trunk space. This is partly because the full-sized Ford body was a bit taller, wider and had a less-extreme tumblehome than the 1961-63 Continental’s.
Would a Lincoln that wasn’t bigger than a Ford sell?
In those days the “bigger = better” ideology was so dominant that a downsized Continental would undoubtedly have faced considerable skepticism from the automotive press. Why would luxury car buyers pay thousands more for a Lincoln if it was the same size as a Ford LTD?
Lincoln could have invested in other ways to make the Continental special, from heightened manufacturing quality-control standards to engineering advances. For example, the car could have been the only big Ford given independent rear suspension and four-wheel disc brakes, resulting in exceptional roadworthiness for an American family car of that era.
One could argue that the early-70s market for a somewhat smaller luxury car wouldn’t have been very big. That may well have been so, but what did Lincoln have to lose? Continental output was under 32,000 units in 1970 — and would only surpass 50,000 in the banner year of 1973.
Ford’s luxury brand only began to make inroads into Cadillac’s dominance with the Mark series, which more closely resembled the Kennedy Continentals in size and stylishness than their successors in the 1970s.
Lincoln gives away its distinctiveness . . . for what?
Lincoln historian Thomas E. Bonsall wrote that the designers of the 1970 Continental prioritized winning over Cadillac buyers. That meant ditching distinctive Lincoln touches such as clam-shell, center-opening doors. “A survey was taken in which it was learned that while Lincoln owners liked the clam-shells, Cadillac owners did not” (2004, p. 122).
As the above production graph illustrates, Lincoln’s attempt to be more like Cadillac didn’t work. So what if they had instead doubled down on the unfulfilled promise of the Kennedy Continentals?
Also see ‘1961-63 Lincoln Continental was not as iconic as often described’
A downsized 1970 Continental would have been a risk, but it would have been much smaller than what Ford took in 1961 because the Lincoln would have been based on a high-volume platform. If sales bombed, then a body stretch could have easily been done.
My guess is that a downsized Continental could have found a modest but steadily increasing market. Perhaps even more importantly, Lincoln would have carved out a distinctive niche rather than being a Cadillac also ran.
NOTES:
Specifications and production data are from the auto editors of Consumer Guide (1993, 2006) and Gunnell (2002).
Share your reactions to this post with a comment below or a note to the editor.
RE:SOURCES
- Auto editors of Consumer Guide; 1993, 2006. Encyclopedia of American Cars. Publications International, Lincolnwood, IL.
- Bonsall, Thomas E.; 2004. The Lincoln Story: The Postwar Years. Stanford General Books, Stanford, CA.
- Cavanaugh, J. P.; 2024. “Curbside Classsic: 1969 Lincoln Continental – Missed It By THAT Much.” Curbside Classic. Posted April 18.
- Gunnell, John; 2002. Standard Catalog of American Cars, 1946-1975. Revised 4th Ed. Krause Publications, Iola, WI.
ADVERTISING & BROCHURES
- oldcaradvertising.com: Cadillac (1970); Lincoln (1970)
- oldcarbrochures.org: Ford (1961); Lincoln (1961, 1969, 1970, 1971)
While dimensionally, the 1970 Lincolns might have matched the 1970 rear-drive Cadillacs, I guess in 1970, I never matched up the Lincoln against the Cadillac. My college roommate’s parents at Rose Polytechnic owned a new 1970 Lincoln sedan, and while it was huge inside and out, my wife’s uncle’s de Ville sedans were much more seemingly cramped inside. While people in the U.S. were buying Mercedes-Benz 3.5 and 6.3-litre SEL sedans, I do not know if Lee Iacocca or moreover Hank the Deuce would have wanted to exchange Lincoln sales figures with M-B. Certainly, even Cadillac did not want to do it, and when G.M. thought about it, they hedged their bets by basing the Seville on an upgraded Chevy Nova platform. Now while gearheads could find the Nova in the Cadillac Seville, my old-moneyed blue-blood boss with family roots in the U.S. going back to the 1630s was so enamored with the Seville’s styling that he arranged to get the first Seville in Indiana and a second in his compound in Key Largo. This is where Lincoln (I would blame Lee Iacocca here.) missed the trend: The Lincoln Versailles was so close to a Granada and Monarch that absolutely nobody was fooled. Why pay for a Versailles when a fully-optioned Monarch could go out the door with much less ? The real question is why Iacocca didn’t spend the time and effort to make the Versailles a really special car in the same way Cadillac did with the Seville.
Introducing the all new 1970 Lincoln Monte Carlo!
I get that snark-and-run quips are pretty popular on the intertubes, but they don’t tend to deepen the discussion. So if you wish to argue that “smaller = cheaper,” then how about presenting some facts and logic?
My sense is that the late-60s and early-70s were a transitional time for the American automotive marketplace, e.g., import sales were rising and mid-sized cars were overtaking big cars. I remember my uncle, who had routinely bought a big American premium-priced car every three years, get a Volvo instead. So I think there may have been at least somewhat more potential for a Kennedy Continental in 1970 than 1961.
If you think that’s ridiculous, tell us why.
A lot of that is where you live. I come from Western Pennsylvania, lived my first 48 years there between two stretches in Johnstown and one in Erie. Very conservative, unhip, untrendy country – as a teenager, I always believed that we were as far as you could get from Southern California and still be in the United States. My father was the local Chevrolet dealer for the first fifteen years of my life, I lived in the showroom and, as a result, was very attuned to the sociology and status of car ownership.
Those factors stated, I can say with all certainty that until you hit the mid-70’s, sized ruled and luxury cars were big cars. Period. The “not Pittsburgh” portion of Western PA had a Mercedes-Benz dealer in Indiana, PA (35 miles northwest of Johnstown) and there was a very small gathering of M-B owners in the rich suburb of Johnstown (Westmont), and they were noteworthy in that they were members of the Jewish community in town, who all lived in that suburb. Wealthy Christian Gentiles, drove Cadillacs, and the bigger the better.
Volvo didn’t exist in my part of the country. We had a Saab dealer, I think he went out of business in six months failing to sell a single car. We had Volkswagen and Renault, Toyota and Datsun had either just arrived or were about to arrive. Obviously, I’m talking about a very politically and socially conservative part of the country, probably very close to the Midwest and a good part of the South. So I’d say your mileage may vary, especially regionally.
Did the De Tomaso Deauville share much with the Versailles / Monarch / American Granada platform?
Also could Ford have been inspired by De Tomaso’s efforts to produce a related platform capable of underpinning a Continental, one that was sophisticated as an Opel Diplomat B and De Tomaso Deauville?
Had to look that one up. The Deauville was based on a Maserati Quadroporte platform with a Ford engine. To your second statement, apparently not.
To clear things up the 1971 Deaville was developed by De Tomaso and appeared some 8 years before the 1979 Quattroporte III, some 4 years after he acquired Maserati in 1975 from a bankrupt Citroen.
It was also in 1971 when Ford acquired an 84% stake in De Tomaso before selling it back in 1974.
My feeling is that Ford wasn’t ready for a smaller anything at that point of time. I’m not positive, but I would believe that planning had started in 1968 or earlier for the ’70 Continental, so bigger is better was still the mantra. The Benz was bought by the “Ann Arbor Eggheads” and not a threat to Lincoln’s position. Detroit was still in their isolationist thinking of what American’s wanted, without acknowledging the changes coming in the marketplace.
I also wonder how well Ford could have pulled off a smaller Lincoln, seeing how they missed the mark with the 1972 Torino with its size bloat and weight. Even if the chassis was “all new” and a copy of Ford’s new philosophy, the car was extremely overweight and overwrought.
As to the independent rear suspension and 4-wheel disc brakes, that’s real pie in the sky thought. Ford N.A. had little to no experience with independent rear suspension, although I don’t know about Ford’s European models. I don’t think that disc brakes became available (front) until 1966 on some Ford models, so until there was a ramp-up of production, Ford would have been out of their depths. More experience would be needed as well as production costs be substantially reduced before Ford could make that leap.
Also, Iacocca was president and was the master salesperson who would have nixed all these ideas as too expensive. He was busy dusting off the original Falcon platform to bring it out as the “all new” Maverick as an example. I don’t think that Iacocca was willing to sell the steak when he was racking it in on the sizzle, bigger is better and throw in any perceived luxuries, as opposed to the quality that the market requested.
I totally agree with your ideas, but I think that you are being too advanced in you thinking as opposed to what the Detroit Group Think was at the moment. Yet another avenue to their self-destruction by isolated and outmoded thinking.
Doing fake designs is a bit like writing fiction about utopias — the scenario needs to be different enough to draw the reader to view reality from a fresh perspective but plausible enough to not completely defy credulity.
In this case, if I were being “realistic” I would have merely tinkered with the front and rear styling to maintain more continuity with the 1961-69s. Even clam-shell doors on the sedan would arguably have been a bridge too far given Ford’s heightened focus on cost cutting. And, yes, during the 1970s Ford was arguably the least likely of the Big Three to have adopted independent rear suspension on an American family car.
I do these fake designs partly to push back on the apparently all-too-common attitude that historical events were inevitable. What a careful reading of history shows us is that there have been many times when events could have moved in very different directions. Would the downsized 1961 Lincoln have seen the light of day without McNamara? Probably not. By the same token, if he had not left so quickly Ford presumably would have gone ahead with the FWD Cardinal/Redwing subcompact — which could have meaningfully impacted the rise of the imports in the second half of the 1960s even if it didn’t lead GM to quickly follow suit. In other words, a change in one decision could have plausibly led to a cascading series of other changes.
I don’t think it was inevitable that the 1970 Continental would slavishly copy the Cadillac. That merely reflected the groupthink of the management team in charge of Ford at the time.
Ford’s greatest successes were never in trying to be better at something than General Motors was. They found out over and over again that you can’t “Out-General the General.”
The biggest hits Ford achieved were when they spotted a niche that hadn’t been tapped yet and were the first to fill it. There are many examples of this strategy paying off. The 1958 Thunderbird, first of the “Personal Luxury Coupes” created an entire generation of profitable cars that GM didn’t have an answer for for half a decade. The basic, simple, conventional Ford Falcon compact that ran circles around the Corvair. Of course, the Mustang is the best example. Turning what was basically a Falcon into an aspirational car for middle class America that was universally loved. It took two years for Chevrolet to respond, but again was never able to capture the same level of success. The Ford LTD, making a luxury sedan available to Everyman. Chevrolet cobbled together the Caprice as an answer, but never caught up.
Of course, leading the pack wasn’t limited to just car models. The original Bronco wasn’t met with an answer for three years. The Ford F-150 Super Cab had the market for extended cab pick-ups to itself for fifteen years. The original Lincoln Navigator created a market for high end luxury SUVs that Cadillac had to rush to respond to with the Escalade.
Ford was able to turn the lowly station wagon into a fake-wood-slathered Country Squire that provided a car in which Mom could take all the kids to school and Dad could drive it to the country club, and both parents look good doing it. Ford owned the wagon market for forty years as a result.
It’s always easier and cheaper to copy the competition and cross your fingers. The bold moves outside the box are the ones that shake up the market and make history. The 1961 Lincoln Continental attempted to do that, and was successful to a degree. The success might not have shown up in the sales numbers, but in setting a design philosophy that would last the rest of the century and eventually lead Lincoln to their most successful sales years.
In 1961, however, the Lincoln brand had just come off a decade of attempting to be a better Oldsmobile, then a better Cadillac, and then downsized into something luxury car buyers couldn’t quite identify with. The Continental Division was a thing, then it wasn’t. The 1956 Continental Mark II was one of the best designs of the 1950s, the 1958 Mark III one of the worst. Somebody in the market for a Cadillac wasn’t inclined to roll the dice on yet another ‘new concept’ from Lincoln, especially as Ford was shuttering Edsel production. There was too much money and ego on the line. It would take the aura of being associated with the youthful style of the Kennedy administration and a decade of continuity for the positive effects of the 1961 Lincoln to really be felt. Purchasing a luxury car was an emotional decision, as well as a financial one.
Just as they were beginning to benefit from the bold 1961 move, the Lincoln brand decided to go full Cadillac again. It’s a shame they lacked the courage of their convictions.
Hmm. The 67=71 T-birds offered a clamshell four door sedsn. Could a riff of that with different sheetmetal and fine corinthian leather make for a new Kennedy Lincoln? I couldn’t find sales figures for the sedan, but I remember back in the day they were quite rare. I note the sedan did not carry into the next generation t bird and no other manufacturer picked up on the personal luxury sedan. Exept for the occasional miracle like the 64 Musting and the first Voyagers, the philosophy of build something no one is building can lead to failure.
The four-door Thunderbird’s output in 1967 almost reached 25,000 units, which represented 32 percent of total production. That percentage held steady for three years. In 1970, when the T-Bird got Bunkie’s beak, four-door sales fell by more than half and did not recover.
Meanwhile, the Lincoln Continental four-door pillared sedan saw remarkably stable sales from 1961-71 — averaging around 30,000 units per year. In 1973 they peaked at 45,000 units but then dropped back to around 30,000 in 1974-75. Note that 1973 sales weren’t that much higher than the previous peak of almost 36,000 in 1966. Interestingly, the regular-doored Continental sedans tallied a smaller proportion of the luxury car market than the clam-shelled Continentals. So if the goal was to expand Lincoln’s market share, copying Cadillac didn’t work.
Of course, trying something different CAN lead to failure. However, playing follow the leader can as well. Part of the skill in running an automaker is having good judgment as to when to zig and when to zag. The 1970 Continental strikes me as a zag gone wrong.
I just think Ford wanted more profits and lower costs for Lincoln and moved the Continental on the full sized Ford and Mercury platform
Right. That was a period of time when Ford was particularly focused on penny pinching. However, the missed opportunity was that they could have generated more volume from the T-Bird platform if the Continental as well as the Mark series shared it.
Henry Ford, Lee Iacocca, Harley Earl, Virgil Exner, Bill Mitchell, Elon Musk. All these men were geniuses at going places in the auto industry others feared to tread. The results of their efforts created new markets, generated incredible profits and set trends for what was to come.
There are as many, in fact a lot more, who attempted to do the same and failed. Tucker, Kaiser, and DeLorean come to mind right off. Being different never assures success. Following the leader rarely makes you become one.
Capitalism is not for the faint of heart.
In 1976, when Cadillac’s Seville wowed the world with its audacity, my dad – a Chrysler and Continental, think ’40/41 drophead coupe – driver wondered allowed why Ford had not considered a performance 2 and 4-door Conti based on the Torino. The lineup would look something like this: A Town Car, the
Contnental, and the Mark IV
The first gen Seville was certainly not a performance car, although the Olds 350 was pretty good for malaise era power. It was based on a stretched Nova platform with its own sheet metal, so at least didn’t look like a JC Whitney edition Monarch like the Versailles. However the front end looked Chevy and the rear end Olds. Neither one was the corporation’s finest hour. A Torino based gentleman’s touring car would be a perfect spot in the lineup, and certainly a lot better than the me-too Versailles.
Obviously you are not a fan of the Seville look but the car design community disagrees. To us this is a great example of restrained design execution.
What is a shame for the Seville is that for some reason the Detroit manufacturing systems could not hold the tolerences that would have allowed the Opel Diplomat to have been the platform instead of the highly modified Nova.
Let’s remember if with the new style of the Continental in 61, Cadillac was still killing Lincoln in overall sales. Truth be told only the 4dr convertible Lincoln is a classic, the 4dr sedan wasn’t bad, but the couple was ugly as hell. Also that body style to me didn’t age well, the later models ( especially 67-69) didn’t seems as stylish as 61-64 models.
I would argue that these later Continentals look like Ford did not know what to do/lacked any conviction of “next”. The kept retreading some elements of the original 1961 version with declining success. I am certain that there would have been executives at Ford that referred to that as evolution while I would call it capitulation.
This was still a time when the Sloan ladder still had more rungs. With the E Car demise, Mercury had a lot of ground to cover. Back Lincoln down to something more like Olds or Buick where it belonged anyway. Turn the Continental to a more extensive upscale personal luxury brand, with a 4 door ala T bird, but exclusive to Lincoln. This would not have the stratospheric prices of the old Mk II but would be broadly in Cadillac’s price range. You can’t compete with Caddy model for model so find your niche and compete on exclusivity.
I wonder to what extent part of Lincoln’s product problems were related to how the dealerships were Lincoln-Mercury stores. Cadillac dealers through these years would have been almost always be single brand operations. No cross shopping inside the showroom.
Both Kim and Jeff are on the money here, I believe. In 1956 (as in 1952 when Jack Reith’s five division FoMoCo plan was approved), the Alfred P. Sloan ladder was alive and well, in my opinion. Unfortunately, it wasn’t until late 1954, that Lincoln got a car that was not a competitor to a senior Oldsmobile. Somehow Benson Ford thought that America wanted another unafFORDable Continental when what it wanted was a car just the equivalent of the Eldorado, NOT a more expensive car. I am surmising that Benson Ford rarely engaged with Robert McNamara. I think if McNamara had oversight over Lincoln and Mercury as well as Ford in 1953, the Ford-Mercury-Lincoln story of the late 1950s would have been much different, and maybe the Edsel would have just been an aborted project.
My take is that the Continental Mark II was to be the halo car that was to show just what the very best of Ford was capable of. Put another way, it was to out class Cadillac and hopefully pull some of them into the Ford fold.
The Mark II did push Cadillac to create the 1957 and 58 Eldo Biaritz and the Brougham to demonstrate what they were capable of.
My take is that Ford’s true failing to Lincoln was to divorce themselves of the Mark II positives with some awful subsequent models. Too many internal politics were at play as various senior players did not like how the Mark II was created by people that were considered outsiders to the normal organization.
Good point!
For some reason, even as a child I didn’t care for the 1970 redesign, save maybe for the Coupé, the profile of which I thought to be really streamlined that year). It may have been salvaged had they kept the clap-door configuration in defiance of Cadillac (after all, Ford did that with the Thunderbird, which was still being made as a clap-door that year), but they didn’t. It just looked like a gussied-up Mercury; in fact, it took me years to tell the difference between the two (and I thought the Mercs looked better). Apparently, that feeling was shared by others: The 1970 sales were even worse than 1969, the last of the 9-year run of the Engel clap-door generation. It was only because of the Mark III that Lincoln was able to eke out 59 kilosales, a good 10 kilos below ’69; yes, those numbers would gradually improve over the decade, but that’s another point.
Even some dealers felt that way. My grandmother told me a story about how she brought her ’67 Conti to the local dealership for routine maintenance in the early-’70s, commented on how nice the new ones looked to a salesman…and the salesman told her she’d do better keeping the car she already had, because it was a long-lasting modern classic. If a man who makes his living by trying to convince people to give up their old rides for new ones would say that, there has to be something to it!
The article suggests that Lincoln should have invested in better quality control, failing to point out that they did, in the prior decade, which was part of the revenue problem. Lincoln adopted a toned-down Mark II quality program for the ’60s cars, which they began to scale back in ’68 (after a botched attempt in the early part of ’66 production) and fully retired by 1970. It was expensive, thus eating into the revenue that otherwise would have gone to profit. That was why they resorted to simulator inspections as opposed to actual, physical inspections: Cheaper, which was Iacocca’s actual bottom-line goal. Even some details of the ’60s cars which now are seen as design flaws were not seen as flaws then, but as engineering advancements…and they worked well past the expiration of the warranty period, which was one of the better ones of the time.
Would I own an early-’70s full-size Lincoln? Maybe, if it were a Coupé; that streamlining despite the size is just awesome-looking. On the other hand, by then Lincoln was deep into “Controlled-Crush,” which they started in’68, making those cars more susceptible to disabling damage in fender-benders compared to (most of) the clap-door generation. Plus, that outside hood release would just have to go; I don’t care for the thought of somebody being able to vandalize the engine bay or steal the battery. That plus the deletion of the bypass feature in the power-window system were steps backward in my opinion. Also, that shrunk trunk (yes, it did shrink from ’69) could cause one trouble if they became used to hauling cargo in the massive trunks of the smaller ’66–9 cars.
Tony, we discussed the Kennedy Continentals’ quality-control regime here and here.
Isn’t it interesting that Cadillac did not preserve the design integrity of the 1975-1979 Seville, instead of the “bustle-back” front-drive of the 1980 and follow it up with a trimmer package overall similar to the Mercedes-Benz 6.3 SEL sedan. Of course, Cadillac was struggling with its powerplant options going into the 1980snand beyond, so the Mercedes had the upper hand in its powertrain options, even though the price tag was higher.
The big block Ford 385 and Windsor V-8s were much more stable for the Lincolns, so Lincoln’s powertrains were set going into the 1980s, so a Euro-inspired, unit-bodied Lincoln could have been designed around a 302-c.i. displacement mid-sized sedan by 1980, rather than a Versailles. Would such a car have hurt the 1982 Continental ? Probably.
Raised in the 50s, I grew up when OTT excessive chromed luxury was the rule. Still believe in that. After 77 GM first downsized vehicles appeared, Lincoln carried on with the bigger is better philosophy taking many Traditional Cadillac buyers. Subsequent downsizing by Cadillac was a disappointment. LINCOLN, what a Luxury car should be and once was. Now even LINCOLN has turned to glorified trucks masquerading as Luxury vehicles. I fortunately have a 2007 Town Car Signature Limited. The last gasp of traditional American Luxury sedans.