Let’s be honest, we romanticize the 1970s a lot. I was there. A lot of it sucked; compared to today, it was dirtier, people always seemed to be cranky, and child seats for cars were just to keep the kid from bothering you as opposed to alive if shit went down. That said, there were plenty of good things, too, not the least of which was the American luxury car industry’s carefree embrace of color, like this butterscotch-on-butterscotch-on-butterscotch Diamond Jubilee Lincoln Continental Mark V.
Look, they even color-coordinated the rubber impact strips on the bumper! And look at the dude they have modeling with the car, dressed to match that rolling, V8-powered Werther’s Original there. That’s not a guy you’d see in modern premium car ads.
Also, here’s something I wasn’t aware of: Lincoln offered a “Carriage Roof” option in place of the vinyl half-roof, and this one covered the whole roof, but eliminated the opera windows in favor of “personal mirrors” inside. What the hell?
From what I can sort of see in that pic, the “personal mirrors” must fit into the oval holes the opera windows once used, and so are big oval mirrors on the inside C-pillars there. I wonder if that’s weird to ride in back there, always catching your own eye off to the side.
Stop staring at me, me! No, you stop!
I like how these look… but I know they go, stop and turn like shit and have dreadful fuel economy.
What I’d want is the body and velour seats of these dropped onto a Tesla Model S chassis.
If you want a smell-track for the 1970s, everything smelled faintly of fried foods and cigarettes (because most people smoked… wherever they wanted), and Love’s Baby Soft and Jovan Musk. Favorite tv commercial – Mennon Deodorant: *hairy guy props himself up in bed, says to camera* I didn’t take a shower yesterday, and I might not take one today…
My mom drove a mark v in this color, although not the diamond jubilee model. I learned to drive in it, although I took my test in my dad’s small by comparison ‘79 bonneville.
It was not a good car. It was unreliable and turned like a pig and the carb was never quite tuned right and the seats had indeed turned into limp bags and it barely fit in our garage and the fuel economy was terrible and the “Cartier” clock in the dash didn’t keep time and so many other bad things.
But my god, look at the glorious bastard. I still love it.
Back in the ’70s the AA (UK equivalent of AAA) crash-tested available car child seats. Turns out some of them were ideal for firing your toddler out through the windscreen in a head-on collision.
???? so in love
Make it burgundy with the white interior! Then send it to ASC for proper convertible conversion (white, of course)
The appearance of these things changes the definition of “drive in restaurant”. You really are driving in something that looks like a fast food restaurant.
My dad had the Mark V Diamond Jubilee in this exact color. It absolutely was his “I’ve arrived” car, having a started an aerospace manufacturing company in the early 70s which took off. He bought it when I was less than a year old, and had it for 3 years until he got in a terrible crash in it when a tractor trailer jackknifed in front of him on the Q Bridge in New Haven one night in 1981 or 82.
He survived thankfully, but the Lincoln was destroyed. He was pretty badly hurt, but those long velour seats and half-assed seatbelts allowed him to actually slide down below the dash, probably saving his life.
And on that note, Torch! You didn’t mention the best part of these cars. Those opera windows had “simulated diamond chip” in the opera windows. SIMULATED DIAMOND.
My dad had a Thunderbird Diamond Jubilee in the “ember metallic” color back in the ’80s
For those who have reached the apex of pimpdom, we present the Lincoln Continental Mark V Diamond Jubilee Edition
Good to see the present Donald Sutherland is able to get ad work in the 1970s, that time traveling rascal.
. . . and, you want a touch of modernity? At least his *hat* is gray!
Those cars were about 2-3 feet too long.
They fixed that with the Mk VI. Looks like it was left in the dryer too long.
Except they shrunk the wheel base along with the length, leaving ridiculous amounts of front and rear overhang. The wheelbase (114″) is barely more than 1/2 of the overall length (216″)!
Ochre is a great color with a great name. Change my mind.
Back in the 70s, the geriatric Lincoln owners would drive up until their front tires hit the parking stop. The front overhang would cover the entire sidewalk. I hated those cars back then and I have grown no fonder.
Man, this tank would make an excellent electric conversion. The cavernous trunk and engine compartment could handle oodles of batteries. The hard part would be converting the power steering and HVAC.
No the hard thing would be paying for all the batteries you would want to stuff in there.
Or, and engine swap to a Triton V10 out of a Ford truck…
@mber: That would still double both fuel economy and HP over the 400ci.
Instead of the Triton V10, I’d rather install the Ecoboost 2.7 or 3.5 out of an F150.
The V10 is a gas-guzzling pig. And the Ecoboost 2.7 has at least 1.5 times the power that these old beasts had stock.
Power steering is most definitely not a hard part.
This is all second hand, so I may have some details misremembered, but the basics are solid. Prius steering shafts have an integrated electric assist. It has its own computer that tells it how much to give power and its related to vehicle speed, but if it is disconnected from the main vehicle computer it will just default to all-power-all-the-time mode. I know several guys that have converted hot rods, kit cars, and others to electric power steering using Prius steering shafts.
It seems to me that 1980’s Hondas (specifically the Prelude) and any other car that would have “Variable power assist steering” have an electric PS pump as opposed to belt driven.
“The hard part would be converting the power steering and HVAC.”
Is it really that hard to put electric motors on the existing pumps?
The really cool thing about the Mark V is you have this enormous, comfortable car to cruise around in, but when you want to be more economical, the hood makes a perfect place to park your Smart car.
Isn’t that what Louie drove in Ghost Dog?
Amazing movie cite – well played.
“It’s poetry….the poetry of war.”
I never imagined Perry Mason owned a Lincoln.
I hated the ’70s. So. Much. Polyester.
People who fetish the 70’s are too young to remember how bad that era was. Outside of the punk rock and reggae scenes, I can’t imagine a single non-awful cultural contribution.
“Outside of the punk rock and reggae scenes, I can’t imagine a single non-awful cultural contribution.”
The bicycle boom. High end, high quality vintage touring and sport bikes are STILL cheap because of overproduction which started in the 1970s until they were supplanted by mountain bikes of the 1980s. Those had their own boom and are still cheap today too.
Agreed, with the exception that some parts of 70s fashion come back around on the trend train from time to time. By contrast, consider 80s “fashion”…that horrible stuff never comes back
If you lived thru the 1970s, and remember all of it, you were not doing it correctly.
Mark V, car of the bearded eccentric billionaire puttering about his country estate, wealthy beyond the need to ever wear a suit again. He has no one left to impress. Security, show that person with the camera to the gate.
I just wish *one* vehicle still offered the cushy velour seats from those Lincolns.
Can I add the trunk lid that covers the “spare tire”?
I remember feeling very disillusioned at an early age when a Continental-owning neighbor opened the trunk and I learned that the spare tire was stored nowhere NEAR the hump on the trunk lid.
I was similarly disappointed to discover the rest of the Parthenon wasn’t behind that grill.
They were cushy but not for long. 5 or 6 years out they were flabby sacks of deflated foam.
True. But can you imagine what a difference memory foam would make in that application? Those over-upholstered seats would be like an all-day hug.
“I just wish *one* vehicle still offered the cushy velour seats from those Lincolns”‘
You’d have to have an equally large cabin to fit them in.
We got plenty of those. Any full size SUV, swathed in burgundy or gold velvet. It would be a big improvement over your choice of grey or black.
I enjoy the incongruous bits (like the turbine wheels and the prominent gill vents) that you’d often see on luxury cars of the era.
They always struck me as a little jarring – very ’70s not-to-distant-future, we-wear-turtlenecks-now high tech – on such otherwise baroque designs. I like it.
I don’t miss the primitive emission controls or the atrocious handling or the godawful inefficiency, but I miss jade green and royal blue and lipstick red and maple yellow and…
I also don’t miss the bumpers sticking 6″ out from the body, or the 10mpg fuel mileage.
Don’t forget one wheel drive. Starting uphill in a rainstorm paralyzed those dinosaurs.
Back in the day, for the 2nd Oil Shock, with a big 2 barrel Autolite swapped in I could get 17mpg highway with the Marquis with a 429. City driving, it dropped to 12.
Things looked better without the 5mph bumpers, but beats today where the least touch on a bumper, and you are out $1200 for repairs
Yeah! At least every interior wasn’t black. Today, we have a failure of imagination. Our choices are charcoal or black. Sometimes sienna.
Where is the joie de vivre? That’s all I’m asking.
You can have all sorts of fancy interior colors on a modern car. You just have to choose a car that already costs too much, and then pay even more.
My Miata has pink stitching on all the interior bits. Not hot pink, but more like Subaru’s sakura no iro pink that was chosen to match the color of cherry blossoms.
I absolutely love it.