(curbside Mark II photos by robadr)
(first posted 10/4/2016) There were three primary reasons Ford spent (and lost) a whole lot of money on the Continental Mark II:
1. To recapture the glamor of its 1939-1948 Continental as well as the classic Lincoln K Models of the 1930s.
2. To show that it could build a car to the same world-class standards (and price) as a Rolls-Royce or Mercedes 300.
3. To crush Cadillac as the nation’s premier luxury car builder.
This shows that in the early fifties Ford was being led by car guys, not savvy marketers, astute executives or bean counters. Henry Ford II was still young and full of chutzpah, and he and his brother Bill were out to beat GM; all of it! After the come-back success of the Ford brand in the early ’50s, they were ready for more. The 1956 Continental was the first shot; the 1958 Edsel the second. Both were flops. But how else to learn the car business? Bill Ford was crushed by the failure of the Continental; Henry was merely chastened. But the lessons learned served Ford well, even if they were expensive. And they still apply today.
The original Continental, the result of a fortuitous collaboration between Edsel Ford and the head of Ford’s Design Department, E. T. “Bob” Gregorie, started out as a one-off custom for Edsel, and became a production model and a phenomena by popular demand. The fact is that it had the very prosaic underpinnings of the Lincoln Zephyr, a mid-priced car, and was something of an 10/8 scale Ford, with the customary solid axles front and rear suspended by Model T-style transverse springs, powered by a rather notoriously unreliable flathead V12. But none of that diminished its allure, thanks to its seductive chopped and channeled body and longer hood. In more ways than one, it was the true prototype of the popular American luxury car: style over substance.
Although the Continental was priced at an 80-95% premium over its donor Zephyr (coupe and convertible), it wasn’t really all that expensive, with the 1940 coupe’s price of $2,783 ($47,533 adjusted to 2016, but making inflation adjustments prior to the 1960s becomes increasingly misleading to to the growth in real incomes). In any case, the Continental was priced at roughly one half of the senior Lincoln Model K and comparable Cadillacs and Packards.
The Continental soldiered along through 1948, by which time it was becoming seriously outdated. Its Wurlitzer jukebox front end didn’t do the rest of its (mostly) clean lines any favors, but it still had pull for being something decidedly out of the ordinary. Which is of course what every luxury brand aspires to.
There were various hopes and plans to build a successor to the original Continental after the war, but they mostly went to the grave with Edsel, its champion, who died in 1943. The company was in total disarray, and it was hardly a priority. Survival was.
After the Conti went into retirement, Lincoln dealers and execs were regularly asked about a successor by its fan club, which undoubtedly was a rather small and exclusive one by 1948. But that included the three young Ford brothers, Henry II, Benson and William Clay, who naturally wanted to see a worthy successor as a tribute to their late father.
In the luxury market after the war, Cadillac was ascendant, Packard in decline, and Lincoln struggled to make inroads. Although the Lincolns were undoubtedly the best road cars of the three in early 50s, that’s not what drove the market then. It was really all about style and image, as it always has and will be, and Lincoln didn’t earn any good marks in that regard. Consider Lincoln’s top of the line 1953 Capri convertible, above.
And then ponder Cadillac’s 1953 bombshell, its new Eldorado. It’s all too obvious that the Eldo is a full generation older in its basic body, dating all the way back to 1948, whereas the Lincoln was all-new in 1952. But who cared; the Lincoln looked like a chaste, straight-laced…Mercury; the Eldo oozed sex from all its curves like Marilyn Monroe.
But the real bombshell was what Cadillac charged for its dolled-up convertible: $7,750! That was a whopping 90% more than a Series 62 convertible (and the Lincoln Capri convertible), minus the heavy make-up. It was a bold and audacious move on Cadillac’s part, and a reflection of their confidence as America’s undisputed luxury car brand leader.
There were always plenty of rich celebrities and tycoons—including MM herself—that were happy enough to spend the big bucks to assure that they were seen riding in something other than hoi polloi-mobiles, even if they were Cadillacs. 2,150 Eldorados were sold in 1954, although the price was now lowered considerably, as was the new 1954 body. Cadillac struck gold with the Eldorado, as much for polishing its image as in actual sales. And Ford wanted in, badly.
In 1952, work on a new Continental began in earnest, and the Special Products Operations was set up and overseen by William Clay Ford. This eventually morphed into the Continental Division. The staff was mostly new hires, as this was to be strictly independent from the Lincoln Division. After an initial concept by John Reinhart, which was rejected out of hand by Henry, a number of outside designers were given the chance to compete, as well as in house groups. The picture above from 1952 may or may not be directly related to this process, but it does show a number of Continental concept models.
One of those models was the Lincoln Cavalier. It would appear that it was likely an early Continental concept, but I can’t confirm it. What is pretty clear is that Ford designer Roy Brown was inspired by its front end when he designed the ill-fated 1958 Edsel.
In 1952, Joe Oros was eager to develop a new styling theme based around large round jet exhaust-like tail lights, as had been used on a late 1940s 3/8 scale model in the Advanced Design studio by Gil Spear. Oros wanted them to become a hallmark of Ford styling, as they well did. He was assigned to develop his ideas in the Lincoln studio, and this was the result. Henry Ford II took a liking to it and thought it had real potential to become the new Continental, and thus gave it the name Continental 195X.
But brother Bill, heading up the Continental project, was not in favor of it, as some clinics with potential Conti buyers found that they preferred a more formal look. As did he. So it was soon renamed Ford X-100 and begat a long line of Ford concepts (and production cars).
The X-100, which Elwood Engel also assisted on, previewed the 1961 “Bullet Bird”, as well as aspects of other Ford, Lincoln and Mercury cars to come. An influential concept, but not on the actual Continental to come.
Presumably this is the clay model by John Reinhart that won the design competition and directly led to the definitive Mark II: understated, subdued, and anything but flashy, a style referred to as “Modern Formal”. Certain similarities to the 1955 two-seat Thunderbird are obvious.
The development team in addition to Reinhart was Gordon Buehrig, Chief Body Engineer, and Harley Copp, Chief Engineer. There was a push to make the Conti a unibody, but Copp vetoed that, as he felt there was too much risk given the lofty goals of the project and the limited time and resources.
It’s sometimes difficult to get a sense of its size from pictures, as the Mark II was deceptively large. It sat on a 126″ long wheelbase, the same as the big Lincoln sedans, but its frame was different to allow a lower body height. It pioneered the “cowbelly” design frame that bowed out around the floor pans. A somewhat watered-down approach was also used in the new 1957 Fords and Mercuries, but not until 1965 would Ford use a genuine perimeter frame that made maximum use of the resulting floor space. Overall length was 218.4″, width was 77.5″, and height was 56.3″. The really big numbers were its weight: 4,825 lbs; 5,190 lbs with air conditioning, the only significant option available, for a whopping $595.
The Mark used Lincoln’s drive train and suspension, but there were refinements and extensive quality checks. The front suspension included special temperature-sensitive shocks. The engines and other mechanical components were built to the highest standards, and there is some conflicting information as to whether the engines were actually partially disassembled after an initial run-in, and checked for tolerances, or not. The body assembly involved extensive hand work, with multiple paint coats along with hand sanding and buffing. And Ford built a special assembly facility for the Mark at Wixom, MI, which would be used for other high end Ford products for many decades to come.
In a somewhat retrograde move, the windshield was actually moved closer the the driver, to make the hood longer as well as to improve visibility. We can only imagine such a thing nowadays.
Consistent with the general design theme, the dash was rather sparse, with an instrument pod mounted off-center on the dash. HVAC controls were down low, with airplane throttle-type levers. Materials and components were all of the very finest available. Due to the low floor, seating was still reasonably high and comfortable.
The extreme attention paid to material and component quality and their assembly has become legendary. 100% of all parts sent by suppliers were inspected/tested to spec. Rejection rates were high, and some suppliers struggled to meet the expectations. Ford was determined to build the Mark to Rolls-Royce standards, regardless of the cost.
Under that long hood sat the Lincoln 368 cubic inch (6.0 L) large Y-Block V8, dressed up for the occasion. Output was rated at 285 hp. Performance? Adequate, or not, depending on your expectations. Although top speed was timed at 118 mph by Floyd Clymer, sprints were not the Mark’s thing at all; 0-60 took a luxurious 16 seconds. The 1957 version lost one of its frame reinforcements and gained 15 hp in an effort to perk things up a wee bit. Handling was safe and predictable, given the times. Brakes were not a particular strong suit. But the Mark was a comfortable, solid and quiet cruiser, which given its weight, should not be a surprise.
William Ford could rightly be proud of his new baby, but it turned out to be quite a bit more expensive to build than its original projected price of some $8,000. The asking price in the end was just shy of $10,000 ($9,695), something yet unheard of in the post war era. Adjusted for inflation, that comes to $88k in 2015 dollars, but that doesn’t tell the full story of its price.
Unlike the 1920s, when the top marginal tax rate was 24%, and then only on income over $100k ($1.4 M adjusted), in 1952-1953, the top rate was 92%. During the mid fifties, even popular movie/tv stars like Ronald Reagan lived in 4,000 square foot ranch houses, not vast palaces. And it wasn’t just the taxes; well-paid professions were just a lot less well paid back then. It was the era of “The Great Income Compression”. That largely explains why the market for really expensive cars was really rather limited.
What was the Mark II’s competition, at its rarefied price level? It turned out not to be the Eldorado, as its price was cut drastically for 1954, down to around $6500. More likely the Mercedes 300S, which stickered for $12,898. It sat on a pre-war chassis, had half the displacement, and none of the Mark’s extensive power-assists. But it did have an abundance of genuine exclusivity, refinement and prestige. Which is of course what mattered the most, to the small clientele at the very top of the pyramid.
Or perhaps a Facel Vega, with a Chrysler hemi under the hood, which ran some $7500 at the time.
The new Ferrari 250 GT series was available in 1956 with a wide range of different bodies from various designers/coachbuilders, like this coupe by Boano, starting at around $12,000.
One could go on and on, as really any European luxury/exotic was readily available, given that there were no safety or emission regulations to importation. And most brands had official importers, like Hoffman Motors. In Hoffman’s new showroom designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, just about every European luxury and sports brand was on lavish display.
The 1950s import boom didn’t just extend to economy cars; all matter of exotics were coming to the states, as it was the biggest market for them, despite the high tax brackets. The really rich knew how to reduce their sting anyway. Just like the 1950s laid the seeds of the imports’ near domination of the lower price classes, so it was with the true luxury cars. American cars just weren’t exotic enough, or sporty enough, or built well enough, or technologically advanced enough, or…
Befitting its lofty aspirations to be taken serious as a world-class luxury car, the Mark II was premiered at the 1956 Paris Auto Show. There was a lot of buzz about it, thanks to an effective PR campaign, and dealers were taking waiting lists. Sales started off with a bang, with some buyers paying premiums to get their cars sooner. But after the first some 1261 cars were delivered in the fourth quarter of 1956, things quickly started to slack off, and soon the Mark’s average transaction price was closer to $8500. Which did not make the early buyers any happier.
Only some half of Lincoln-Mercury dealer opted in on selling the Continental, since promotional materials were expensive and they were required to keep 10% of their inventory in Mark IIs. But their gross profit per car started at $2300, although undoubtedly that was cut into by the subsequent discounting.
It became clear pretty obvious as 1957 unfolded and sales continued to weaken that the Mark II was in trouble. Was it just too expensive, or too subdued in its design, or was it the lack of other models? The latter point was clearly a point of contention within Ford. A considerable amount of development money was spent on a retractable roof version, but ultimately deemed too expensive to put into production at what would undoubtedly have been at very small numbers. If the coupe was already too expensive, then what of this?
The investment in the folding mechanism was eventually recouped as it was used in the 1957 Ford Skyliner as well as adapted to convertible use in Thunderbords and the 1961-up Continental convertible.
The same pricing problem would have bedeviled a conventional convertible. One was built by Derham, shown extensively, and then given to Bill Ford’s wife. Another (above) was built later by Hess and Eisenhardt, converted from a coupe. It was estimated that a convertible would cost some $18,000. No sale.
A four door hardtop was considered to be the most obvious brand extension for Continental. It started out as a stretch of the coupe, which would of course have minimized tooling costs.
But that was soon considered to be unfeasible from a quickly-evolving design standpoint, and John Reinhart worked at developing a new four door, dubbed “Berline”. This is an early version.
At some point the Berline (or Mark III) program was shifted to unibody construction, undoubtedly to share development costs with the upcoming unibody 1958 Lincoln. At this point, this was not just a Lincoln dressed up as a Continental, but still a distinct and genuine Continental. And one previewing aspects of the 1961 Continental.
But it was all for naught. The 1957 Mark II got off to a very weak start, and the writing was on the wall, literally. The Continental Division was shut down in early 1957 already, even before the Mark II went out of production. Why didn’t Ford hang in there, as GM did with its Corvette, that lost money for a number of its early years?
Continental was losing well over $1,000 per Mark II, and the division was gushing red ink. What forced a quick shut down was that Ford Motor Company went public (over Henry’s dead body) in January of 1956. It simply wasn’t going to be tenable to have Continental be a source of major red ink for any extended period of time. Would things have turned out differently if Ford had stayed privately-held? Probably not; trying to establish a new über-luxury brand in the US in the 1950s was just not in the cards. Or really anytime since the 1920s.
Ironically, Continental’s building was turned over to Ford’s next great hope in battling GM; Edsel. That didn’t last much longer either.
The Continental name was continued for 1958, but just as a top-tier version of the new and ill-fated 1958 Lincoln. It was called Mark III, but was held in such low regard that Ford had no compunction in re-using that name for the real Mark III in 1968.
This time Ford got it right: a flashy coupe with neo-classical design features but built on a platform shared with more prosaic Fords, and none of the over-the-top attention to quality, materials and assembly, in order to keep the price very much in everyman’s reach. Or in other words, like the original Continental’s formula. Its price was $6,585, almost half of the Mark II’s, in adjusted dollars. It was the formula for mass-market success, and the Mark III really ushered in the whole era of neo-classical, faux-luxury kitsch-mobiles to come. Every American deserves to have a Continental Mark in their driveway!
And soon enough it seemed like that was the really case, even if it was just a ’77 Thunderbird for half the price. Jeez; I can’t tell them apart; can you?
Meanwhile back at GM, Ford’s bold assault on the top of the American luxury market could not be left unanswered. The response, the 1957 Cadillac Eldorado Brougham, was both similar yet different. The Fords were mainly listening to themselves and a few Continental die-hard owners to guide them to the “Modern Formal” design of the Mark II. Not Harley Earl; he listened carefully what regular folks were saying and reacting to at GM’s Futurama traveling circus. And the result was the Eldorado Brougham, a somewhat cynical distillation of what real Americans wanted in a luxury car, not those clubby, stuffy Fords.
Fins, wrap around windows, four-door hardtop with suicide rear doors, air suspension, X Frame, and a list half a page long of every other do-hickey GM’s futurists/imagineers could think of and build right down to a perfume atomizer. And its price? An eye-watering $13,074. Take that, poor little Mark II! And don’t ever try messing with Big Mama GM again!
Never mind that only a mere 704 Eldorado Broughams were sold in its two year run, and that GM’s losses per car were much higher. But then it could well afford them, given that they were buried in the huge profits Cadillac was spinning off. And GM wasn’t trying to establish a whole new division. The Eldo was a classic halo-mobile, and was probably more effective at its mission of getting folks into a Cadillac dealer than the Mark. Why? because the other cars on the Cadillac showroom floor didn’t look that different than the Eldorado, especially after one looked at the stickers. Meanwhile, 1956 Lincolns had effectively zero resemblance to the Mark.
The Fords had some painful lessons to learn, but they learned them fairly quickly. Most of all, they were smart enough (some of the time) to let others run the show, guys who really understood the American car buyer. The truth is, none of the Fords ever really had a feel for that. Henry senior built a car that was irresistible because of its price and technical features at the time. But once that formula didn’t work anymore, GM and Chrysler stole its thunder, because they did know what Americans really wanted.
My Mark II story has run out of gas, but I need to share these wonderful shots that robadr took in British Columbia and posted at the Cohort. I’ve long given up trying to find a genuine curbside Mark II, but thanks to the Cohort, my curbsiding proxies, this one will more than do.
I remember seeing my first Mark II as a kid in Iowa City in the early 60s, parked at a UI football game, undoubtedly owned by a rich alumni. I was quite taken by it, because I really didn’t know of it and how it fit into the scheme of things automotive at the time. It was a mystery wanting to be unraveled.
Peering in through its side window, I knew this was something special, and that it was from before my time in the US, as it obviously wasn’t a current Continental and looked a bit dated. The quality of the materials and the somber styling said “expensive” and “exclusive”, but I didn’t have a clear picture of just how much so that was the case.
The lack of tail fins and the generally muted design was a bit of a puzzle to me, as it just didn’t fit into what else was going on the mid 50s. I guess I wasn’t the only one. And I wasn’t too sure about how much I really liked it or not. It left me impressed and confused.
Which is still mostly my response to seeing this one again. It’s imposing, dramatic and earns respect for going against the grain. But it’s also odd; that steep little windshield looks like a toy car’s. The roof is a bit off. The spare tire wheel hump is not my thing. I respect the effort, but it’s a bit wasted on me. Not that I can’t properly appreciate its uniqueness and rather commanding presence. It’s got it in spades.
Some 3,000 Mark II’s were built, and about half of them are still around and accounted for. It’s a car that undoubtedly made quite an impact on a generation at the time. It certainly did on the Ford brothers.
America has never made a successful high-end luxury car since the 1930s. And it probably never will again. Why? The European long tradition of high-end sports and luxury cars was one that did not want to be so readily stamped out as in America after the war. There was no room for high-end small-scale producers here, and the large ones had to chase each other into ever greater volumes in order to support the rapid-paced styling changes, big V8s and all of the new comfort and convenience features that everyone wanted.
America had democratized the automobile with the Model T, and it had done the same with luxury cars. The Continental Mark II was an attempt to sidestep that unstoppable movement downmarket propelled by Cadillac. It was just as destined to fail as was the Model T once Chevrolet took the low end of the market upscale. And the two ends of the market have been converging ever since, leaving increasingly little room for anyone caught outside of those pincers. As Ford found out the hard way, more than once.
Related:
CC 1940 Lincoln Continental Convertible: Beauty For Beauty’s Sake JPC
CC 1965 Lincoln Continental: The Last Great American Luxury Car PN
Like those Dagmars on that black 54!
Tumblehome refers to the angle of the side windows. It comes from warship design, where ships tapered in to a smaller deck in order to make hostile boarding more difficult.
Re: price inflation.
You note the original Continental had a price of just $47,000 price adjusted, which indeed seems low for one of the premier cars of the day.
But another factor needs to be taken into account: incomes, like prices, have risen. Far fewer people in 1940 could afford a (price adjusted) $47,000 car than today. More people are making more money (price adjusted) than back then. The fruits of economic growth!
So don’t be surprised that the expensive car of the day seems cheap even in price adjusted dollars – few people in those less prosperous times could afford one, even though today that seems like the price of a modestly nice car.
I’ve made this point numerous times in other posts, and I focused on the much higher marginal tax brackets in the 50s, and how income stratification was much lower then. So yes, this was a very expensive car, and there were a lot fewer mega-rich folks back then.
I saw one o these earlier this year being hauled on a flatbed southbound on Telegraph Road. The finish seemingly was all patina, no actual paint. It was headed in the right direction (towards Bloomfield Township/Bloomfield Hills), so I hope it was going to a shop able to do a proper restoration, and is owned by someone who can afford the restoration. I like to imagine the car driving on Telegraph or Woodward on summer weekends in some future time.
Two of the Ford family Mark IIs are now in the huge collection of that part supplier in Florida that frequently appears in My Classic Car on youtube. Kind of sad that they didn’t want to keep them.
A 1956 Continental Mk.II is one of the ‘inhabitants’ of Youtube channel ‘coldwarmotors’. It’s mid-restoration now, having been acquired as a patched-up, but underneath rusty and crash-bent sad thing. Do you want to see how inticrately-bent sheet metal parts and panels are made from flat sheet steel? That is your channel. Search for ‘continental’ on the channel to find content. It’s one of the channel owner’s friend’s car, so it’s not a primary focus, but gets occasional features.
The 90% top marginal tax bracket had its’ effect on the auto market – there really wasn’t an ultra-luxury one above the standard Cadillac-Lincoln-Imperial owner-driven sedans, coupes and convertibles.
The original Eldorados were profitable in small numbers, being a modified standard Caddy (less and less “modified”, more just a trim level as the decade went on), the Series 75 limo was a vocational model used as a corporate VIP perk and by the funeral trade, and the likes of Rolls-Royce was foriegn and could get away with decade-long production runs, selling the persistence of its’ distinctive but dated look much as VW did at the other end of the market.
Into that, Ford likely indeed overestimated the Mark’s niche, possibly intended for its’ styling to be as stabilized as the Rolls or at least as the Continental ended up being in the ’60s to save money on annual tooling changes, and Cadillac probably expected (but GM could afford) to lose money on the Fleetwood Brougham but built it anyway to one-up Ford.
This was a great re-read this morning—I still hope to see one of this in person sometime, somewhere.
I’ve got the SAE writeup from 1956–the whole development tale. Plenty of it’s already mentioned above by Paul or in comments, but I’ll just append it all, page by page.
page 2:
page 3:
page 4:
page 5:
page 6:
page 7:
page 8:
page 9:
page 10:
page 11:
page 12—last one:
The Mark II was certainly a contrast to the angular, canted headlamp, design language that followed in the later large models. The over all design of the long hood, short deck, personal car did set a precedent that was popular for the next thirty years.
I had read about the Mark Mark II thirty years ago, and had been impressed by the extent that Lincoln went to ensuring world class quality. While there has always been rich people, there are certainly more of them now, and the growth of the current high priced car market reflects this.
It’s just my guess, but maybe back in the ’50’s most wealthy people had to earn their money over a long period of time, and they just couldn’t see spending such an excessive amount over a standard Lincoln or Cadillac. I mean, there was a reason that these people were wealthy, and even if you inherited money, you had to invest carefully and cultivate your finances to hold onto what you had, or to increase it.
My vote goes to the Facel Vega as the most desirable car pictured in the post. I think that the ’63 Riviera came the closest to that ideal, unfortunately, Detroit lost the thread after a couple of years.
A belated technical point about the Continental Mark II is that its frame design was really not similar to the perimeter frame Ford adopted in 1965. The Mark II frame was still self-supporting, using the Y-member to provide bending and torsional stiffness rather than a traditional X-member.
A perimeter frame is not the same as a ladder frame or K-member frame, because it’s not really self-supporting. In a perimeter frame car, the body structure provides most of the rigidity, as in a unit body. The frame acts essentially as a full-length subframe; it’s designed to flex and bend so the body won’t. Structurally, it’s the exact opposite of a self-supporting ladder frame, where you place a relatively flexible body (like a pickup truck) on a rigid frame. With a perimeter frame, the body is rigid and the frame is flexible.
Interesting info here. I wasn’t aware of the detailed differences between the perimeter and ladder frames. Thx.
I’m quite aware of that, and thought that I made it pretty clear that it was not a perimeter frame. I did say “similar” in terms of the cowbelly and perimeter frames offering more leg room, and perhaps that’s poor wording, which I will change.
The point you were making about subsequent frame designs following the lead of the Mark II “cowbelly” frame in using K-members or Y-members rather than an X-member to get the crossmembers out of the way of the footwell areas of the floorpan was quite correct — if you look at a 1957–1964 Ford frame, the outer frame rails have a distinct cowbelly shape, and only the convertible frame has an X-member. (GM cruciform frames achieved the same effect in the opposite way: only having the cruciform member and keeping it as narrow as possible through the passenger compartment.) I don’t mean to argue that point.
Where I’m quibbling with the text is just in the implication that the perimeter frame was a product of that trend, which for the most part it wasn’t. Also, it’s still a common misconception (which I know you don’t share, but some other readers likely do) that a perimeter frame is just a frame with side rails along the outsides of the passenger compartment, when it’s really embodying a different philosophy. The Mark II frame and the frame designs it inspired or foreshadowed asked, “How can we still achieve the bending and torsional stiffness we need while keeping the chassis members out of the footwells as much as possible?” while the perimeter frame said, “We want the frame to be flexible in these modes — how can we tune it so that the frame will bend and twist in the areas we want it to and to the degree we want for best ride quality and minimal NVH?”
I’ve been meaning to write a post about the perimeter frame for a long time, as it’s one of the least understood car technologies of its time. The great majority think of a perimeter frame as just a ladder frame that splays out.
I haven’t read anything about the development of the perimeter frame. Olds and Pontiac started using it in 1961, and clearly it’s something of an evolution from the X Frame, as both required the body to provide a more significant amount of rigidity to the combined structure.
This article from the 10/63 Car Life is useful: http://wildaboutcarsonline.com/members/AardvarkPublisherAttachments/9990392125557/1963-11_CL_New_Looks_in_Frame_Design_for_1964_1-4.pdf
Extremely useful; thanks!
I will use that for a post. I just haven’t had the time to do any real research on it.
The only element that id doesn’t address is the total combined torsional stiffness. It suggests that perimeter frame cars have less combined torsional stiffness that say the X-Frame cars did, as a trade-off for lower cost and a quieter and smoother ride.
Given how critical overall torsional stiffness is to improved handling, it seems counter-intuitive that GM ( and eventually Ford) was able to make the significant improvements in handling in the later 60s and especially in the 70s with perimeter frames, if overall stiffness was lower. Or am I missing something?
I think there are several factors: First, in a perimeter frame car, most of the torsional rigidity comes from the body shell; the frame doesn’t do a lot in that sense, by design. This isn’t terribly different from a unit-body car with subframes or isolated front and rear cross-members; those aren’t providing torsional or bending stiffness either. Second, part of the point of a perimeter frame is that its flexibility isn’t uniform, but rather concentrated in certain areas — principally the side rails, which aren’t carrying the suspension or powertrain. In essence, the side rails provide an additional avenue for the front and rear cross-members that ARE carrying the suspension to dissipate NVH energy, rather than putting it all into the body mounts.
Assuming you have a torsionally rigid body structure, the challenge, with either a perimeter frame or unit construction, is to strike a balance in the stiffness of the body mounts. If they’re too soft and floppy, you’ll get lots of annoying deflection between the body and frame(s), but if they’re too stiff, NVH will be high. One area where I assume GM (in particular) was able to make a lot of inroads in the ’70s was in more precisely modeling the loads involved, to allow the body mounts and bushings to be stiff where they needed to be stiff and soft where they needed to be soft, to control NVH while keeping body and suspension from feeling like they’re communicating by semaphore.
As mentioned, another illustrative reference is this October 1991 JDM brochure for the S140 Crown (excuse the cumbersome viewer format, which is from the Toyota official site). If you flip through to pages 25 and 29, it illustrates the subframes and the perimeter frame:
https://www.toyota.co.jp/jpn/company/history/75years/vehicle_lineage/catalog/60005492A/pageview.html
It’s perhaps the clearest illustration I’ve ever seen of the conceptual relationship between a perimeter frame and separate subframes. (The full frame differs from Detroit practice in that there is a third transverse cross-member in the middle, although the captions still explicitly describe it as a perimeter frame, and it’s clearly not intended to be self-supporting.)
The perimeter frame appears to have been prompted at least in part by experience (both at Fisher Body and the divisions) with the development of the Corvair and the Y-body senior compacts, which provided a lot of practical experience with the pros and cons of unit bodies. None of the divisions was very happy with true monocoque construction from an NVH standpoint and it presented some assembly procedure challenges, so they were obviously looking for a best-of-both-worlds alternative.
The most coherent discussions I’ve seen were all from vintage Car Life reviews, since their editors understood the concept well enough to remark on it. Beyond that, I would guess that the most robust sources of information would probably be SAE papers published by GM engineers around the time the perimeter frame first appeared.
For me, the most revealing example was the Toyota S140 (Crown/Aristo) platform of the early ’90s, some versions of which had front and rear subframes and some had a full-length perimeter frame. Just that fact (and as I recall, the brochures have some useful illustrations) was a real lightbulb-over-the-head moment in terms of the function of the perimeter frame as a big subframe rather than a rigid platform.
Earlier, I spent a half-hour searching GM patents from 1957 to 1961 to see if I could find anything related to perimeter frames, but came up empty. Pontiac engineers claimed they started working on the perimeter frame in 1957 due to skepticism about the X-frame, although I have my doubts about that.
I grew up in an affluent middle-class neighborhood in Western New York. When I was a young teenager I earned cash cutting the lawns of a handful of wealthy neighbors homes. One man was the local heating oil distributor who was a FoMoCo enthusiast of the highest order. His six-car garage was home to a spectacular black ’56 Mark II with a red/black leather interior…the vehicle seemed longer, lower and wider than every other pristine lust-mobile in that huge garage. It just oozed class and elegant, quiet luxury. The paint was so perfect the car appeared to always be wet.
Another neighbor-client also was a Ford fan. His garage housed a deep maroon/burgundy ’56 Mark II. It’s ivory-colored leather cabin reminded me of butter.
Both neighbors kept their Continentals well into the 2010s, when their estates were liquidated and the dream machines of my formative years were dispersed, along with the other vehicles in these two modest collections. Perhaps a rivalry existed between the two Ford men, as they both also owned 1963 Ford Thunderbird Sports roadsters, one being triple white, the other being red with black leather and top. The other cars in the big collection included a 1961 Continental convertible sedan in a beautiful deep turquoise/aqua roof to ground. I also remember an exquisite 1965 Continental sedan in parchment/pale beige. The two other vehicles were a 1966 Shelby 2+2 in blue with white stripes and interior and finally, a bottle green over olive leather with black vinyl top 1968 Mark III.
Alas, these summertime treats are now a memory….along with oil home heating fuel.