
1980 Lincoln Continental Mark VI Signature Series in Dark Maroon / Orlando Classic Cars
For 1980, Ford shifted its popular Lincoln Continental Mark personal luxury car to the smaller, more fuel-efficient Panther platform, only to watch in horror as sales of the new Continental Mark VI fell to about half the level of its gargantuan Mark V predecessor. The conventional wisdom is that customers balked at the Mark VI’s downsizing, but was that the real problem? I’m not so sure.

1980 Lincoln Continental Mark VI Signature Series with power moonroof / Orlando Classic Cars
I recently read an interesting paper analyzing trends in automotive fuel economy between 1978 and 1984, the first five and a half years of the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) era, and this passage jumped out at me:
Size class shifts have proven to be a relatively minor factor [in the improvement in average fuel economy]. Consumers’ primary strategy for buying a more efficient automobile is not to buy a smaller one, at least not in terms of interior space, but to shop around for a more efficient nameplate or configuration. … This fact has some interesting implications … [and] it aids in understanding why consumers did not strongly resist downsizing, as had been predicted before the fuel economy standard had fully gone into effect (10). Consumers appear to be reluctant to accept downsizing in terms of interior volume, but are willing to accept downsizing in terms of vehicle weight or exterior dimensions. [My emphasis.] This explains why consumers have been able to make the transition from the large American cars of the early 1970s to the more European-sized fleet of today.
Although this observation might have been true overall, most people who remember the 1980–1983 Lincoln Continental Mark VI (and the 1980–1982 Ford Thunderbird) will insist that these cars were exceptions, that buyers in this class HAD rejected their smaller exterior dimensions and scaled-down styling, despite the new models’ improved efficiency.

1980 Lincoln Continental Mark VI Signature Series / Orlando Classic Cars
There’s no question that the Mark VI was far less commercially successful than the outgoing Mark V. Even in a market still gun-shy about fuel economy in the wake of a second oil crisis, the Mark VI had laid an egg: In 1979, the last Lincoln Continental Mark V sold 75,939 cars, outstanding for such an expensive car, but in 1980, the new Continental Mark VI sold only 38,891 cars, 47 percent of which were the new four-door sedan version, which was essentially a Lincoln Town Car with Mark styling cues. Obviously, something had gone wrong.

1980 Lincoln Continental Mark VI Signature Series / Orlando Classic Cars
It wasn’t that the Mark VI looked radically different than the Mark V — Ford had tried very hard to make the styling of the 1980 model as evolutionary as possible. At launch, Jack Telnack, then the executive director of Ford North American Luxury and Intermediate Design, had stressed that “the Mark VI retains virtually all of the exterior design cues of the Mark V, including opera windows with Continental star and distinctive rear deck.”

1979 Lincoln Continental Mark V / Orlando Classic Cars
The Lincoln-Mercury studio had felt they had little choice in that. As designer Gale Halderman later remarked, “All of the bosses drove Lincolns. The Ford family drove Lincolns. So, [if you changed the Lincoln,] you were changing something that everyone above you liked.”

1980 Lincoln Continental Mark VI Signature Series / Orlando Classic Cars
If anything, Halderman and executive stylist John Aiken had gone overboard in their determination to adapt the design features of the Mark V to the more squared-off proportions of the Panther platform, introduced the previous year for the full-size Ford LTD and Mercury Marquis.

1979 Lincoln Continental Mark V / Orlando Classic Cars
Although more than a foot shorter than the Mark V, the Mark VI was still in no way small — the two-door was 216 inches long, while the four-door was the same 219.2 inches as the new Continental Town Car. It was more space-efficient, but the 6-inch-shorter wheelbase and a 2-inch increase in height gave the Mark VI the sullenly upright posture of a middle-schooler who’s just been admonished to sit up straight.

1980 Lincoln Continental Mark VI Signature Series / Orlando Classic Cars
(I can’t help thinking the two-door Mark might have had slightly better proportions if it had used the 3-inch-longer wheelbase of the four-door model, but the net effect would probably have been about the same.)

1980 Lincoln Continental Mark VI sedan was 3.2 inches longer than the two-door, with a 3-inch-longer wheelbase / Bring a Trailer
Nonetheless, Halderman later said that the Mark VI was one of his favorite designs. The styling tested very well in consumer clinics, and a Popular Mechanics owner survey found that the people who bought the Mark VI liked it a lot. It was exactly what a lot of Lincoln buyers had said they wanted: familiar Lincoln styling, with the expected oceans of synthetic wood, plasticky leather, and brightly colored crushed velour, but in a tidier and more fuel-efficient package.

1979 Lincoln Continental Mark V / Orlando Classic Cars
The Mark VI was all of that, even if it was only economical in a relative sense. (The 1980–1982 models were still two-ton cars with the aerodynamics of a barn door; 1980 owners averaged around 13 mpg in urban driving and 18 mpg on the highway.)

1980 Lincoln Continental Mark VI Signature Series / Orlando Classic Cars
If the Mark VI was what buyers said they wanted, why did so few of them turn out for it? It’s important to stress that whatever anyone thought of the new Mark’s looks, this period was a truly rotten time to buy a new car. Throughout the late ’70s, inflation had been pushing up the prices of food, energy, and household necessities, while household incomes had stagnated. After about five years of relative stability, new car prices had also shot up significantly; for instance, a base 1980 Mark VI started at around $2,300 more than a 1979 Mark V.

The 1980 Mark VI was available with the two-barrel 351 in addition to the standard 302; although real-world fuel economy was about the same with either engine, the 351 rated 2 mpg lower on the EPA combined scale and was dropped for 1981 / Orlando Classic Cars
At the same time, as the graph below illustrates, interest rates on new-car loans were skyrocketing, reaching an average of about 16 percent in 1980 and peaking at almost 18 percent by the beginning of 1982, compared to perhaps 10 percent back in the early ’70s. As a result, all domestic car sales were down almost 25 percent from their 1979 level, even in the higher price categories.
Also, while the 1973–1974 OPEC embargo had proved only a temporary damper on sales of big luxury cars, the second oil crisis that followed the 1979 Iranian revolution had again given buyers second thoughts about thirsty land yachts, which the Mark VI still definitely was. Cadillac De Ville sales also tumbled by more than 50 percent for 1980, while the Eldorado was down 23 percent. Some of those customers may have switched to smaller high-end imports — Volvo, Audi, BMW, and Mercedes-Benz sales all rose during this time, with Volvo showing the biggest gains — but it seems that quite a few people decided it just wasn’t a good time to trade in on another pricey luxury car.

U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Economic Analysis, Survey of Current Business, October 1984 (I added the blue highlighting to full-size and luxury sales)
As the above chart illustrates, the market share of new domestic full-size and luxury cars bottomed out in 1981 and began a gradual improvement over the next three years, helped by a big drop in interest rates in late 1982. However, the market for homegrown luxury cars remained weaker than its late ’70s peak for the rest of the run of the Mark VI.

1980 Lincoln Continental Mark VI Signature Series with Dark Red velour upholstery / Orlando Classic Cars

1980 Lincoln Continental Mark VI Signature Series with Dark Red velour upholstery / Orlando Classic Cars
1982 was the worst year for Mark VI sales, which fell to 26,336 before recovering a bit to 30,856 for 1983, the last year of this generation. The final tally was 132,781 cars in four model years, where the Mark V had sold 228,862 in three. Mark VI sales also fell well short of the FWD Cadillac Eldorado, Buick Riviera, and Oldsmobile Toronado, whose sales picked up smartly as the economy improved.

1983 Lincoln Continental Mark VI Bill Blass Edition / Mecum Auctions
I think the big difference was that the 1979–1985 GM E-body coupes were rakish enough that at least some Baby Boomers were willing to buy them; median buyer age was mid-40s. By contrast, the Mark VI seems to have been pretty solidly Boomer-proof, still aimed at essentially the same crowd who’d bought the 1969–1971 Mark III a decade earlier. (In the Popular Mechanics Mark VI owner survey, almost 60 percent of the more than 1,000 owners surveyed were over 50.) Judging by the subsequent upswing in Town Car sales, there was still a market for traditional domestic luxury cars that looked like they’d been styled with a T-square, but even many of those buyers increasingly preferred boxy four-door sedans to boxy two-door coupes.

1983 Lincoln Continental Mark VI Bill Blass Edition in Midnight Black and French Vanilla with black Cambria Carriage Roof / Mecum Auctions
Certainly, if you weren’t already a fan of big coupes like this, the Mark VI wasn’t likely to convince you. It was soft and supremely quiet, but by ’80s standards, it was starting to feel like almost as much of a lumbering dinosaur as its oversized predecessors. The ride still got queasy over wavy surfaces, fuel consumption was still pretty heavy, and the injected 302 (the sole engine after 1980) provided only 130 hp to haul more than 4,000 pounds. The four-speed AOD transmission also made for sleepy top-gear acceleration and tended to “hunt” annoyingly between third and fourth at around-town speeds.

1983 Lincoln Continental Mark VI Bill Blass Edition with French Vanilla leather and Greenwich cloth seating surfaces / Mecum Auctions
As for the styling, you can judge that for yourself, although I’m with Consumer Guide, which called the Mark VI “overdecorated and conspicuous … for extroverted high rollers.” It was lavishly equipped, but for the price — $20,229 for a “base” Mark VI coupe and $24,533 for a 1983 Bill Blass Edition like the Midnight Black/French Vanilla car — you could have a Mercury Grand Marquis AND a Ford LTD Crown Victoria, which were mechanically similar if not quite as plush.

1983 Lincoln Continental Mark VI Bill Blass Edition / Mecum Auctions
Of course, the Mark V had also been expensive, and at least as gaudy, but where it had fit the zeitgeist of its era, the Mark VI now seemed unfashionably anachronistic despite its digital instrument panel and electronic gadgets — too severely tailored for the tastes of a shrinking cadre of aging loyalists.

Electronic instrument panel was a delete option for the 1983 Mark VI / Mecum Auctions
The Mark VI is not at all my cup of tea, and I’m sure its awkward proportions probably didn’t help its case in this fashion-driven segment, especially in the latter half of the run. However, I think its biggest problem was not its styling or its size, but rather that Ford had been so fixated on clinging to the success of the Mark V that they had failed to consider where the luxury car market was going rather than where it had been.

1983 Lincoln Continental Mark VI Bill Blass Edition / Mecum Auctions
The “Aero Bird” Thunderbird and subsequent Mark VII demonstrated that Ford was capable of looking forward as well as backwards (the 1983 T-Bird alone sold nearly as many cars in one year as the Mark VI did in its entire run!), but the Mark VI was aimed at placating existing customers rather than attracting new ones, which just wasn’t enough in a more difficult market.
Related Reading
Vintage Feature & Review: 1980 Lincoln Continental And Mark VI – The Challenges Of Shrinking Giants (by GN)
eBay Find: 1981 Continental Mark VI – Pine Opalescent Panther (by Tom Klockau)
Design Analysis: Did The Lincoln Mark VI Have The Biggest Overhang Ratio Ever? (by Paul N)
Curbside Classic: 1983 Lincoln Continental Mark VI – Missing the Mark (by J P Cavanaugh)
One thing Lincolns of the 1970’s had (whether Marks or the big Continentals) was presence. And they felt luxurious. The doors were heavy and closed with a really great sound and feel. The interiors were as nicely done as anything built in the US at the time, and outside the cars were attractive.
The 1980 versions of both the Mark and the Continental were botched. The cars no longer had presence. Their styling and their proportions were off and the elegance was gone. The interiors felt thinner and cheaper. This affected the entire array of cars on the Panther platform, but this sort of thing was easier to take in a Ford.
The Mark VI played in a league where style and presence was valued above almost everything. The Mark V had it. The Mark VI just didn’t.
My two cents on the central stylistic failure of the Mark VI go something like this:
The Mark V kind of sprawls all over the place, especially in profile, which makes it seem very confident in the amount of space it takes up. (Like the one Jock Ewing in Dallas, as NavyBrat said below, it’s a very Texan kind of car.) I think those qualities spoke to affluent late ’70s buyers who liked to imagine themselves above the economic fray of the energy crisis/stagflation era.
The Mark VI looked (and was) more upright, which also made it look and feel kind of uptight. It was still extravagant, even if its quality had slipped from its predecessors, but it now seemed self-conscious and defensive about it. It still has the vibe of the middle-aged men in every movie and sitcom of the ’80s and ’90s who are resentful that their doctor has warned them to stop smoking, eat less red meat, and occasionally eat a vegetable other than the olives in their martinis.
Jock Ewing drove a Mark V at the beginning of the Dallas TV series in 1977, but I swear that at some point in 1980 or 1980 he drove a Mark VI Coupe, although it was not featured often. After the actor who played the part died and the character of Jock was also laid to rest, there was an episode where Miss Ellie gazed at a Mark V and pondered about what to do about Jock’s car now that he had passed away.
I’d forgotten about that. I have the first four seasons of Dallas on DVD, but I haven’t watched them in a while.
The Mark IV and V are Lincolns, but the Mark VI is clearly a Ford. Lincoln couldn’t handle the Panther without it looking like a tarted-up Ford. Before this time Lincoln hid their Fordness well. The IV-based Thunderbird looked like a bargain Lincoln. But the Mark VI looked like a Lincoln kit car for a Ford.
When the Mark VII arrived, it lost that Ford look. That’s why it looks like a classic, while the Mark VI looks like a mutant Lincoln/Ford.
Well, Lincoln did sell an awful lot of Panther Town Cars. I just don’t think the hardpoints translated into two-door PLC format.
Imagine if Cadillac tried to make their new ’79 Eldorado mimic the styling of the previous model year. The results would have been similar. The Mark VI was a caricature of the Mark V.
I’ll take the Mark V any (every) day. (and I did).
(File Photo of a 79, Mine is a 77, Same color, but w the 460).
the photo..
The 2 door is too much car for the wheelbase, it looks silly. the old barges were a whole luxury car and looked like it, this is Lincoln by TEMU.
Standard did the same thing with similar results with their Mayflower
Ford insisted on its cars having those really stupid overhangs in these years. They do NOTHING for the looks and make them all look ridiculously top-heavy.
One thing that has always bugged me about these cars is the ludicrous front overhang. The wheelbase here is too damned short.
I think you make a good thesis, Aaron that it wasn’t the shrinkage of the Mark VI but it was the economy (stagnant incomes, high interest rates) plus the residua of the 2nd Gas Crisis during the end of the Carter presidency and mired in the Malaise era. I remember the Mark V distinctly because I watched “Dallas” the prime-time soap series, and that is what Jock Ewing drove–as mentioned above that car had an outsized presence (like Jock) and that front deck was as long as a light aircraft carrier. Clearly the Mark VI hung onto the usual styling cues, but it looks truncated (stubbed) in the front. The clincher was the customer surveys showing the car itself wasn’t the real problem (other than being underpowered), but it was just a lousy time to buy a (big expensive) car. I didn’t realize that the car was a tad higher than the long (and I do mean long) and lower Mark V.
It is reasonable to ponder this execrable excrescence (and its predecessors-in-title) and resign oneself to the decision that it is not possible ever to understand America.
I mean, people actually paid very good money for it.
“Some of those customers may have switched to smaller high-end imports — Volvo, Audi, BMW, and Mercedes-Benz sales all rose during this time, with Volvo showing the biggest gains”
Personal data point: in 1980, Mother traded her 1976 Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham in on a 1980 Volvo 244GL. I guess she was one “of those customers”!
Mark VI sold better in its first year than Mark VII sold in its best year – 1988 – and Mark VI sold better in its worst year than Mark VII sold in six of its nine year run. I doubt Mark VII did better for CAFE than Mark VI, except for the rare BMW diesel, so perhaps Ford should have just stuck with it.
It depends on whether or not you count the four-door Mark VI, which was essentially just a Town Car with hidden headlights and a decklid hump. If you look only at the two-door coupes, the curve largely flattens out from Mark VI to Mark VI.
The dilemma the Mark VII faced was that Lincoln was trying to sell it to Baby Boomers, who didn’t have a lot of interest in Lincoln and regarded the brand as downmarket compared to European luxury cars, while existing Lincoln customers were starting to age out of the market.
Poor sales of the Mark VI (as well as the also-new-for-’80 T-Bird and Cougar XR7) are usually blamed on their styling; specifically late-’70s design language not scaling well to the shorter, shorter-wheelbased, taller, boxier Panther platform. This was clearly part of the problem (I particularly found the framed glass on all the early Panthers to look clunky compared to the sleek frameless glass on the previous designs). But there were clearly other major factors at work. The recession, the second fuel crisis, and high gas prices hurt car sales in general, but personal luxury coupe sales were especially hit hard. I think PLCs, like disco and ’70s-style customized vans, were just falling out of favor by the 1980s For example, 1980 Pontiac Grand Prix sales in 1980 were half (228,444) of what they were in 1978 (114,714), despite almost identical styling. By 1982 that figure was down to 80,367; by 1986 it was 40,584. The second-gen Chrysler Cordoba hit with even more of a thud, about 1/3 of peak sales in its first year of 1980, then sharply down further from there, despite what I think is an attractive design (worries about the company’s health and minimal advertising hurt too).
The GM E body PLCs did the best of the bunch perhaps, for several reasons. They benefitted from advanced engineering, good space efficiency, and attractive design inside and out. Notably, unlike Ford and Lincoln, the GM cars took their styling cues not from the huge 1978 models they replaced but rather the first generation of each PLC (i.e. ’63 Riv, ’66 Toro, ’67 Eldo), all of which were lauded for their looks. Thus, the ’79-85 cars had a familiar design language yet didn’t like mini-me versions of the previous models.
The Mark VI (and Fox PLCs) not only didn’t look very good, their performance wasn’t too hot, either, particularly fuel mileage, which was the whole point of the downsizing. The smaller GM PLCs were better by every metric.
The saddest losers were the Mopars, especially the 1981 Imperial. Buyers of these types of cars weren’t too interested in gas mileage, so the big, good-looking, old-school Chrysler should have cleaned up. Instead, driveability issues with the new computer-controlled EFI soon reared their ugly head with nearly all of them getting a conventional carburetor under warranty. Frank Sinatra was so annoyed by his that he famously returned it for a more practical (and dependable) Lebaron station wagon for lower-key grocery runs.
The auto makers” bigger is better” backfired on them. Downsizing meant a smaller car at a more expensive price. Come on people you can do better. Maybe we have a bunch of know it alls that weren’t around at that time and are telling us what they read in history books.
The Mark VI seems to have gotten caught in a cycle plan vice back in the mid-Seventies. It’s business case had long been tied to T-Bird, but that car got downsized to the LTD II body for 1977 (with incredible success), and then downsized again for 1980 to a completely different platform. So the ’80 Mark VI was looking at either a single or double downsizing. They chose the single, and because there was no T-Bird body to work from, apparently they had to use the standard Lincoln’s taller package and sheet metal to get the financials to work.
I think they should have used the ’80 T-Bird body. The renderings in the first Related Reading link shows the logical next step: a more aerodynamic, downward-sloping hood, of which the ’81 Imperial dialed one in nicely. And those Lincoln renderings also show a longer axle-dash, which means the planners would have needed to fight like heck to get one. Success might have been within reach, but defeated by the industry’s longest standing shortcoming: poor vehicle strategy.
The Mark VI is one of my absolute all time favorite Lincoln’s. I would totally take a 2-door coupe, or the 4-door sedan.
I’d agree with your assessment, especially regarding interest rates in the early 80s.
The only thing I’d add is I think the Mark VI suffered from the same downsized, ill-proportioned “stunted” look that GM had with its first A-body coupes in 1978 (Cutlass/Regal/Monte Carlo/Grand Prix). GM fixed this with the 81 models, while Ford went Aero.
I bought a dealer’s car. 1981, 2DR, HT, White lthr. 2bbl carb. Drone that car off-road, through 12-15″ shallow river crossings, Up-Down I-5, hrs I-80, the 101, Coast Hwy 1. Best, most comfortable car we ever had. I’d buy another today, and update it if I could afford it. Got up to 21mpg fwy. Only bad thing was Variable Venturi 2bbl carb. Unreliable. I still miss it!
Comment about Mark IV being a Lincoln and not the vI…..the Mark III and Mark IV shared their frame and engineering with the Thunderbird. So the panther being the basis for the VI is not different.Then the VII was back to shared with the TBird, and other Fox vehicles.
I’m surprised this thread made it this far without any mention of the “Touring Lamp” option.
Actually this would have ideal a decade later as a DRL setup. As it stands, it’s ludicrous.
Nobody wanted to turn to stone.
Very Stutzesque! This looks like a prototype Virgil Exner package, where he only got as far as the touring lamps before they fired him… 😉
When the 1980 Marks downsized from the 1979 models that was the end of the Mark series in my opinion. When they went from a two-door only and branded a Mark as a four door they lost me. Just like when T-Birds added a four door in 1967.
In my opinion, the last beautiful Mark was the 1972 Mark IV.