Curbside Classic: 1969 Lincoln Continental – Gold (You’re Indestructible)

 

1969 Lincoln Continental. Edgewater, Chicago, Illinois. Wednesday, November 16, 2022.

I like a variety of music playing in the background on the days when I work from home.  Part of my morning routine before almost everything else involves loading the five trays of my new-ish compact disc player (yes, they can still be purchased) with music that will span the entire morning up through my lunch break.  The morning of this writing, among my selections was a compilation of electronic anthems of the ’80s.  Some may call it regression, but to me, hearing music from around my elementary school years (which I’ve written about before) often helps to put me in a calmer state of mind, especially during month’s end when many clients and agents are trying to close deals and book business.  It’s a reminder that if I could master my multiplication tables, I can handle my inbox.

1969 Lincoln Continental. Edgewater, Chicago, Illinois. Wednesday, November 16, 2022.

Among the artists featured on that ’80s compilation was New Romantic act Spandau Ballet, fronted by lead vocalist Tony Hadley.  It was only just over a decade ago that I saw him perform in concert during the annual Market Days event that takes place in the Boystown neighborhood of Chicago, not far from Wrigley Field.  Market Days is billed as the largest street festival in the Midwest, with attendees numbering in the hundreds of thousands over two days.  I remember hearing Hadley’s voice before I recognized that it was him performing on the medium-sized bandstand toward the northern end of Halsted Street toward Addison.  My older brother had owned a cassette of their third album, True, and I was familiar with the two Billboard Hot 100 top-40 singles from that album, the No. 4-charting title track and “Gold“, as well as also many of the other album tracks.

1969 Lincoln Continental. Edgewater, Chicago, Illinois. Wednesday, November 16, 2022.

“Gold”, despite its modest, No. 29 chart peak, was probably my favorite song on that album, with the accompanying music video having been one of the first I had ever seen.  It’s an uptempo track that also has an upbeat, optimistic lyric:

Gold (gold)
Always believe in your soul
You’ve got the power to know
You’re indestructible
Always believin’…

Any song about finding inner strength, like this one or Joe Esposito’s “You’re The Best” from the Karate Kid soundtrack, was going to speak to me at that elementary school age.  I’d wager that the ideas of indestructability and longevity appealed to many other kids in my classroom as we continued to inch ever further toward the increased independence of adolescence, growing up, and realizing ourselves.

1969 Lincoln Continental. Edgewater, Chicago, Illinois. Wednesday, November 16, 2022.

Here is a ’69 Lincoln Continental, on the opposite end of the decade that started with the clean-sheet ’61 about which CC had featured a vintage Car Life review at the end of last month.  In that original article, the ’61 was extolled as the “best-looking American car built today”.  That ’61 remains such a beautiful design even now, with its clean sides, curved glass, and chrome-topped beltline.  Annual changes were the norm for many models up through the ’80s, so it was inevitable that the purest essence of the original aesthetic vision for the early models was going to be compromised with each new version.  Still, lasting in this same basic form through the ’69 model year demonstrated this design’s true staying power and a certain, apparent indestructibility.

1969 Lincoln Continental. Edgewater, Chicago, Illinois. Wednesday, November 16, 2022.

The color of this example appears to be Light Copper Iridescent.  The fact that Abraham Lincoln’s head is on a copper penny makes the naming of this color seem like an intentional tie-in between the make and its namesake president.  Maybe it was the tint of the street lamps above, or perhaps the substandard (sorry) photos I managed with my phone on that misty night, but this hue appeared to be more of a rich gold than what I normally would consider to be copper, which I think of as having more of a reddish tint.  The colors in Lincoln’s palette that year also included Medium Gold Iridescent (which actually looks gold) and Light Gold (which looks more like champagne), but this copper color looks gold enough for me to work with my metaphor.

1969 Lincoln Continental. Edgewater, Chicago, Illinois. Wednesday, November 16, 2022.

For ’64, there was a two-inch lengthening of the Continental’s wheelbase to 126 inches, but that’s something I wouldn’t have been able to tell by comparing pictures of the different, sequential model years of the Continental.  Their looks were evolutionary from one year to the next.  Just like that children’s game “telephone”, where a message is secretly passed down the line from one person to the next and ends up being reported as something completely different by the last kid, that’s what I feel had happened with the styling of the very last Continental of this generation before the redesigned ’70 models were introduced.  The introduction of that proto-formal, upright grille for ’69 after years of featuring a more horizontal frontal look seemed to be the cap on a decade of subtle changes that all seemed to add up to a more impactful net effect at the end.

Non-Mark Continental sales were down only slightly from ’68, with about 38,300 ’69s sold between coupes and sedans against a combined total of 39,100 the year before.  Peak sales of this generation of Continental came in ’66, with almost 54,800 sold.  The 1970 redesign would register another slight drop in sales, down less than 2% to about 37,700.  Our featured car has a 365-horsepower, 460 cubic inch V8 under the hood and weighs no less than fully two and a half tons to start.  Sedans outsold the coupes by a ratio of almost 3:1 for ’69, which is interesting especially given that coupes were generally still very popular at that time.

1969 Lincoln Continental. Edgewater, Chicago, Illinois. Wednesday, November 16, 2022.

Spandau Ballet were active as a band between 1979 and 1990 before splitting up.  They reformed in 2009, but appear to have disbanded again as of 2019.  Similarly, after a near-continuous run between 1940 and 2002, the Continental was discontinued, brought back again for 2017, and then dismissed following weak sales after 2020 with no apparent plans for its return.  Evidently, neither the band nor the car’s place in the United States marketplace was indestructible.  Still, parked at the curb, this fine Lincoln’s chiseled profile commanded my attention against the early evening bustle of a normal weeknight in the neighborhood.  This example may not be golden and a little imperfect, but it’s still a broad-shouldered Lincoln from the end of nearly a decade’s run of a design that exuded an indomitable confidence.

Edgewater, Chicago, Illinois.
Wednesday, November 16, 2022.