Where has Maid Quiet gone to,
Nodding her russet hood?
The winds that awakened the stars
Are blowing through my blood.
O how could I be so calm
When she rose up to depart?
Now words that called up the lightning
Are hurtling through my heart.
William Butler Yeats surely had something in mind other than a Lincoln Continental when he penned the short little ditty above, titled “Maid Quiet,” but a bit of lightning hurtled through my heart when I saw this beautiful “Russet”-colored Lincoln on Facebook Marketplace last week.
Here is the ad: Rare Original 1966 Lincoln Continental Coupe. Runs great, fully loaded luxury. Only 15,700 of these were made. Everything is here, just needs someone to restore it to their liking. Needs: tires, minor electric window work, minor floor pan rust repair. $16,000 OBO Contact Steve (this is my wife’s facebook (sic)). Thank you.
From what I can see, this car doesn’t need much restoration to be a perfectly poetic collector car. The ’66 Continental Coupe has already been covered here over the last few months, its Riviera-like profile having escaped my notice until it was pointed out. But even if the Lincoln can’t quite rival the glamour of the original, it can be appreciated for its Turbine Car-aping color.
I’ve long been enamored by Chrysler’s Ghia Turbine Car, and I’ve made it one of my life’s goals to “visit” as many as I can. I think I’ve seen five of the remaining nine in the metal (the car pictured above lives at the Henry Ford Museum). The Turbine Car’s distinctive “Turbine Bronze” color seemingly prompted a short blip of mid-sixties passenger car popularity, culminating in Chrysler’s “Turbine Bronze” and Ford’s “Emberglo” (labeled “Russet” in the Lincoln line).
Whether or not Ford’s answer to Turbine Bronze was an attempt to capitalize on Chrysler’s beautiful rolling test bed, I don’t know, but they would be within their rights considering that the Turbine Car itself was a forgery of not only Ford’s Thunderbird, but also its old La Galaxie concept car of the 1950s. Elwood Engel liberally plagiarized when he saw fit, which is again fitting, because he fundamentally designed this Continental in the first place when he was working at Ford Motor Company. Such is the tangled web of the American auto industry.
I would feel fairly confident buying this particular Continental “sight unseen,” which is an oddly paradoxical idiom of the buyer’s trade. The seller took no less than twenty pictures, although the undercarriage was completely ignored. Here, we see a bit of ’65 Riviera in the taillights.
The interior pictures definitely show the Turbine Car influence on Lincoln designers. This magnificent color scheme is missing the Turbine Car’s dramatic console and gauge cluster, but the consistency of the bronze is compelling.
Here is the Stahl’s Automotive Collection Turbine Car for comparison.
The Lincoln’s interior trim color is “Emberglo,” and it’s everywhere. It’s on the door panels.
It’s on the back seat. It’s on the carpet.
It’s on the floor mats, the steering wheel, parts of the dashboard.
It’s on the data tag: “84” under “Trim” is “Emberglo.” As mentioned previously, Emberglo is also the Ford Division’s label for this Lincoln’s exterior color. By the way, this car was apparently scheduled for assembly on August 27th, 1965, so it was a very early-in-the-model-year build. The District Sales Office is Chicago, which coincides with this car’s current Wisconsin address. The axle code of “16” doesn’t match up with anything: It should be a “1” or a “6,” but not both. Interesting. The “4” under “Trans.” denotes a C-6 automatic transmission, which was introduced in 1966.
The trunk is appropriately massive, although it is disappointingly not trimmed in “Emberglo.”
Under the neat-but-not-really-practical-front-opening hood sits a complex nightmare of plumbing, wiring, and assorted knick knacks and vacuum hoses waiting to ruin one’s Sunday drive at this late date. That’s why I have mixed feelings about antique luxury cars. This car was beautiful and luxurious; in fact, Yeats’s title “Maid Quiet” would have been a great nickname and a dorky homonym for a Lincoln Continental. When new, it was designed to coddle the original owner as few other mobile bank vaults could, but that came with an inordinate amount of complexity that can today lead to heartache if an owner doesn’t know what they’re getting into. My ’63 Thunderbird has taught me that I prefer a simpler conveyance in my personal fleet (although the T-Bird isn’t going anywhere), at least if said luxury car was manufactured by the Ford Motor Company. Just look at how awful it would be to work on anything in there.
Ford’s engineers must have foreseen a game that has enjoyed an inexplicable return to popularity lately.
The Lincoln, by the way, was powered by the massive 462 cubic-inch MEL engine, soon to be displaced (ha) by the new 460 by the middle of 1968. I haven’t heard anything particularly bad about the MEL; it’s just old-school technology with limited parts availability.
An alternate nickname for this car could be “Plagiarist,” which makes my title somewhat off-base. The esteemed W.B. Yeats is known as one of the greatest poets of the 20th century, and he would bristle at the thought of being aligned in any way with a copycat. But this wonderful, quietly loud Lincoln certainly looked to its competitors for some ideas to get it started on its way. My enthusiasm about discovering a car like this for sale couldn’t conceal some evidence that it’s not a very original idea, even if it is a unique find today.
I would still drive it with pride all day long. Now, if I could just Tetris it into the garage.
What a beast! A nice one though.
++1
Beautiful car! I own a 64 Convertable. To my suprise the car in the photos has crank side vent windows. That suprises me.
We mechanics used to challenge each other to see who could get the smoothest idle when tuning a 462. A well balanced one could idle silky smooth below 500 rpm. No matter how well tuned, an owner would be lucky to ever see double digit fuel mileage. Smooth & quiet it might have been, but the 462 was a notoriously thirsty beast.
Well, one could fit a lot of batteries under that hood…
Gross.
I always enjoy the factory idle specifications on some of these ’60s cars. I think my T-Bird and my ’65 Mustang were both supposed to idle under 500 rpm in Drive, although neither seems to much like that today (the Mustang has a mild cam). My ’53 Buick actually will idle at about 450 rpm in gear.
Yeah, eh? Prior to about ’68, the Slant-6 idle spec is 500 to 550 rpm in Neutral. Nothing works very well at that speed—the alternator’s output droops so the ignition performance droops (and the lights dim, and the blower slows…); there’s not much airflow across the radiator because the fan’s not turning very fast; there’s not much airflow through the carburetor so it doesn’t work very well; there’s not much airflow in the intake manifold so fuel tends to drop out of suspension, etc. There is plenty of room to bump the idle speed up to 650-700 rpm and make all that stuff work better without causing obnoxiously harsh automatic transmission engagement or excessive creep.
Yes, most of my stuff is set to 550-600 in Drive (or 700-800 in neutral for the manual transmission cars). Good enough…
Well, I can attest to double-digit fuel economy, from an engine that was gradually blowing its rings. I would consistently get a net of about 13 mpg in all real-world conditions, sometimes 14, before the rebuild. Now, admittedly, since the rebuild, oddly that fuel economy has dropped, to about 11 mpg under the same real-world conditions. Some of that must have to do with the carburetor being offset, but I’m wondering if the bore-out may have something to do with it; mine is now a 468 as a result of the rebuild. On the other hand, I don’t know how a mere 6-cid increase in itself can cause a 15% drop in fuel economy.
In revisiting this article, I noticed something I should have noticed earlier. The brag about this particular car being “fully loaded” is far from accurate. My option count on this car totaled only five, which is even fewer than the number of options my own sedan had…though admittedly, this car was given the power-lock option (seriously, OPTION?? On a LUXURY marque??), which my own 4-door was not given (!!!), though that was a deficiency that was relatively easy for me to remedy. At least most of the other options this car was not given can be retrofitted, some with more-modern systems; but a few like the auto-dimmer would be very hard to retrofit. At least the hardest option to retrofit, A/C, is already in place, so there would not be a whole lot of difficulty with that.
As for replacement parts, they are only hard to get if one does not know where to look (I do, so that argument is moot to me). I personally did not have much trouble locating the parts I needed for the MEL engine. Even the hardest-to-find components, rings, were found and acquired relatively quickly, a big boast considering that a part shortage in the past couple years made rings for any engine of any make extremely difficult-at-best to find, let alone overbore options.
Following up on my previous fuel-economy issue, I confirmed that the carburetor I was using was the cause of my economy woes. Getting a year-specific core, rebuilding that, and swapping it in fixed that problem.
Correction: Six options. Another look revealed an AM/FM radio, which was an extra-cost option over the standard AM-only head unit. For those who may wonder, the other five I spotted were the following: Vinyl roof skin; leather upholstery; 6-way seat adjuster (2-way was standard that year); the aforementioned power locks; and A/C, though which of the two A/C options this one has (manual-control or the then-new ATC, the less-troublesome manual being my preference) is impossible to determine from the low-res picture.
Something else that occurred to me in the article, which I think warrants clarification. Reference to the Riv is made here, suggesting this car being just another obsequious follower of styling trends of the time. NOT accurate. The Riv did not even debut until ’63, and the series this car belongs to debuted in ’61…and when it did, it CHANGED the way cars were styled on an almost-revolutionary scale. To play devil’s advocate for a mite, it is true that the debut of the 2-door variant of the clap-door generation by ’66 was a following of the pack; to compete against Cadillac, the bigger rival sibling (yes, these two marques are actually siblings), the marketing eggheads decided a 2-door variant was called for. But the overall styling was spearheaded by Lincoln, not Buick or even GM for that matter. The Riv was probably GM’s first response to the gauntlet Lincoln stylists had thrown down, though some Pontiac enthusiasts may chime in with the ’63 Tempest. But those cars were little more than additions to a specific category of cars, though their styling was handsome. Lincoln, however, CHANGED the industry in ’61, not only with its standard for looks (which would take Cadillac another four or so years to emulate), but also with engineering and longevity standards. Many of the maintenance standards we use today started with the ’61 Lincoln; e.g., the elimination of the 1,000-mile “break-in” period. Also, warranty wars: Lincoln’s full-coverage warranty was fully twice as long as the best anyone else offered, and many kilomiles ahead of the norm back then (90-days/4,000-miles). This decade is likely the last time Lincoln made a difference in the automobile industry, save for a few minor later “firsts” to the brand’s credit.
Great article. Not a colour scheme you’d typically expect on a car that’s generally seen as ‘establishment’. And almost always spotted in corresponding serious colours.
Thanks!
That must one one heavy hood for those sturdy looking hinges to hold up. Think of all the weight of that hood on top of the very front of the body. Much better to have been positioned at the firewall.
The face of this car looks like it’s thinking about its next move. Planning its escape on a route of its own design. Very pensive, thoughtful, yet unapproving of the onlooker. I’ll make up my own mind where I shall drive.
Beautiful photos, and a well cared for car.
I owned one, a 67. Surprisingly the hood and trunk lid were nicely balanced. They’d go up and down with a 2-finger push, and very little pressure required to latch. Some engineers really worked on creating a low effort, precision feel to these components
Wow. That’s a two-year-old car. The weatherstripping under the hood still has the gray powdery appearance that it had when new. The trunk has never been used.
Also, the house behind it in most of the pictures is a perfect match in both Engelism and color.
Tail pipes have got to go. Some window motors need work. What else is new about that? Yes, it is a vacuum assist nightmare under the hood which continued under Ford luxury cars for some years. That being all said I LOVE IT!
Aw, it’s not so bad, especially if you happen to have a shop manual to study. It can feel like neurosurgery at times, I admit; after all, these cars were the master-nuts of automotive technology when new. But, compared to today, hunting and expelling gremlins from the vacuum and electrical systems is relatively easier.
That said, there were design flaws, most of which were conceived as anything but flaws…but flaws nonetheless. However, every flaw in these cars’ engineering can be engineered out, making for one gravitational riding experience. Not a day goes by that mine doesn’t draw attention to itself (and mine is not exactly in what you’d call “museum-pristine” appearance). It certainly wasn’t dubbed “America’s most distinguished motorcar” for nothing.
Had one, in Arctic white. with presidential Dark Blue leather. It shared the driveway with my partner’s 66 Imperial. You could see Engels influence in both, though Engel had moved to Chrysler long before the 66 was penned. It was of course, a first evolution of the nice clean 61. Of course these were far less expensive 30 years ago, the Lincoln then costing just 10% of todays asking. The Imperial was similarly priced. These were toys as we had newer cars as DDs
Lovely! I could be wrong, but from the way it comes through on my monitor it looks to have been painted at some time in the past, and with a version of that color that came out a little more hotted-up than original. The paint inside the door jambs and trunk looks a little more subdued to me.
Yes, Ford’s Emberglo/Russet and Chrysler’s Turbine Bronze are heavy favorites of mine – they were around for such a short time in the mid 60s. I never knew that Lincoln offered an interior to match!
The 66 is a favorite of mine, though I prefer the sedans to the coupes (reverse of 25 years ago). I really need one of these to complete the set in my experience – I have the 63 Cadillac and 64 Imperials under my belt, so a Lincoln of that general time frame would be a great learning/comparison experience. But garage space would be a problem these days, just as for you.
I know I talk about it a lot, but my garage will fit two wide and two deep, and if I stagger a big car and a small car end to end, the big car can’t be more than MAYBE 210 inches long, and that’s if I move the lawn mower into the middle.
That cuts down a bit on the dream list, but there are a lot of cars I like that come in under the mark. 🙂
I agree about the Emberglo/Russet colors – and I find that interior completely mesmerizing.
And the name Emberglo is one of the most evocative automotive color names I can think of. Much more so than Russet, which bears too much of a similarity to Rust… I’m surprised that name ever made it out of the marketing department doors.
It must be shocking to young people that car interiors weren’t always black and/or tan or gray. “Can you even dye my eyes to match my gown?”
There’s a good reason Lincoln didn’t offer a coupe in ’61. Its monumental style just can’t do swoopy. The Mark III is little better. The Mark IV and V work because they’re so over the top.
I kind of feel the same way. But “Motor Trend” disagreed with us, stating that 2-door variants of otherwise-4-door cars were superior. Personally, I don’t think so. Besides, the 2-door versions of this car just don’t really have the distinguishing appeal of the sedans and ‘verts…unless a really hot customizing kid somehow can manage to overhaul the doors by reversing the hinge placements and the door handles. I’ve seen that done once…and aside from the goofy wagon-wheels also added, it looked SO cool!
I note Ford used the same York/Tecumseh paintshaker of an –
NVH maker– air conditioning compressor on their top-of-the-range luxemobile that they did on their less patrician models.Chrysler did similarly with their own RV2 compressor, though on the Imperials they put on a rather elaborate “helical-grip” clutch with an inbuilt heavy inertia ring (flywheel) to smooth things out somewhat.
Gorgeous car and color. Ford PR needed to think of different names, though. Russett makes me think of potato chips, and “Emberglo” reads to my mind like a a combination of the words embargo and burgle.
Emberglo (with a parchment vinyl roof) was the paint scheme for the 1965 Thunderbird Limited Edition Landau. A more handsome car, IMHO. I never liked the front styling of this Lincoln as much as the earlier models but the rest of car is quite nice.
I LOVE the ’65 Emberglo Landau; it’s one of my favorite T-Birds. Honestly, if one would have come up for sale before I bought the ’63, I probably would have bought it, even though I like the ’63 better in general.
I have to disagree with the author’s opinion of the hood hinging. I will admit that any work in the engine bay makes for an inconvenient side reach…but, that said, this hood simply cannot fly open and blind the driver, a problem that many much-newer cars have had. Plus, unlike almost every other car of the era, the hood configuration meant the placement of the primary release lever inside the cab, making for a likely-unintended, yet still very relevant, added security. Nearly all other cars, to include contemporary Fords, had release catches on the outside, making the engine bay easy pickings for vandals and thieves to either sugar the carburetor or steal the battery…which, among other things, became very popular by the early-’70s.
Also, large and weighty as these cars are (emphasis on the latter thanks to the unit-body construction used then), they do not look all that large from a distance, not even when in a parking lot among a slew of new vehicles around it. I do have a challenge at times trying to find mine in a Wal-Mart or mall parking lot if I don’t take note of where I parked…and it’s not like it’s easy to mistake for another car nowadays.
The ’70s Lincolns dwarf these cars, yet they don’t have any more interior room to them (less, in fact, in their trunks), and they are actually a hundred to five hundred pounds lighter.
Stunning, just stunning.
Usual shipping address please….
I’m not as fond of 60’s Continentals as many on here are, but that color nails it!