Dress codes seem to be much more relaxed these days in many places where formal attire had once been the norm. When I began my career in the insurance industry just over twenty years ago, I had been required to wear a tie every day. At some point maybe ten years ago, a change had been made first to allow for “business casual attire” (which meant nice slacks and a collared shirt) during summer months, which eventually led to a year-round adoption of this more relaxed style of dress.
While I don’t necessarily miss having to spend my extra money on ties and nicer pants and shirts, I will say that there was something about wearing a tie every day during the week that made me sit up just a little bit straighter at my work station and feel slightly more serious. I had grown up watching my dad, a college professor, go to the office wearing nice ties and sportcoats, and I’m sure the kid in me had looked forward to doing the same once I was a “grownup” who had entered the working world.
Even my place of worship on Sunday mornings has a very chill approach to manner of dress. I had been raised in a very conservative religious environment where many men wore suits and ties, and women wore nice dresses, shoes and costume jewelry. I rocked a clip-on tie for years as a youth, and usually the first thing to get yanked and tossed into a corner when our family got home was said “tie”. Nowadays, I feel perfectly at home in a pew wearing a nice, hole-free pair of Levis and a button-down short-sleeved shirt. When it’s really hot outside during the summer, I will not think twice about wearing shorts and a t-shirt.
It was on a Sunday morning a few years ago when our featured car came rolling up to a local intersection in my neighborhood. If the background looks somewhat familiar, it should, as these were the buildings against which I had photographed a ’65 Ford Thunderbird Landau that was traveling in the opposite direction. The Edgewater Beach Apartments Building (which actually houses co-op units) is a splendid-looking structure that could probably make any car in its foreground look more glamorous. The Lincoln was its match, in my opinion.
I’m particularly fond of the last of these big Town Cars (and Coupés), having written about two of them last year. These cars have been amply covered here at CC, so you might want to click here and here for more comprehensive reading. I just love the idea that this one materialized in traffic on this particular morning looking as scrumptious as a peach bellini cocktail with raspberry drizzle served at Sunday brunch.
Judging by the temporary plate out back, this one looked to be a new purchase for this fortunate owner. About that factory color, it was called “Light Apricot Metallic”. The range of vibrant, pretty hues available for ’79 as exterior colors stands in stark contrast against the tuxedo black color that many of this car’s descendants from just twenty years later were painted. I’m at a loss to identify another make and model of car that had seemed to fall so far in apparent prestige from being a truly luxurious status symbol owned by many private buyers to the livery vehicle of choice in many urban areas.
Don’t get me wrong. I do very much like the new-for-1998 Town Car that had traded its trademark, boxy style for a more rounded, “aero” look, and in the right colors and with the right wheels, they can be stunners. (A friend owns two.) The truth is, though, that I’ve seen and ridden in too many examples of these that seemed to have slid very quickly down into the pit of used-up beaterdom to be able to look at these latter day examples in quite the same way as I would be able to, otherwise. Much like dress codes in many types of places have been relaxed in recent years, around the turn of the Millennium, Lincoln’s design language (like that of many other upper-tier makes) had come to abandon many traditional styling cues as it sought to redefine what a modern luxury car should look like.
I do love that American buyers sent our outgoing ’79 Town Car out in style, having responded by nudging final-year sales of this generation up by 4.5% over the prior year, to a total of about 76,000 units (before plummeting to 31,200 units in the face of 1980’s economic recession, among other factors). People knew a good thing when they saw it, and perhaps when they laid eyes on the ’79-era Panther-platform Ford LTD (not a bad-looking car to my eyes, but not to everyone’s liking), they figured they had better get on the last, full-figured train to Lincoln Land before it left the station for the last time.
As for our featured Town Car, it provided more than a touch of class on an otherwise casual Sunday morning. Sometimes, getting there can be at least as fun as arriving at one’s final destination. Can I get an “Amen”?
Edgewater, Chicago, Illinois.
Sunday, April 3, 2016.
I love the dress-code to formal car analogy. I too started working in a career and company where a tie was expected. Over the decades the morphing to “casual Fridays” then business casual every day, then the point where many engineers and even a few managers would wear shorts and flip flops. I never went that far down that path, but now I’m wondering if my final years of work wearing (clean and newish) jeans and casual shoes, came from the same automotive trajectory that had me owning pretty informal cars, like a pickup or Prius … or for that matter, a motorcycle.
I really don’t have any clothing nice enough to be buried in..lol
The joke in my family was always “don’t even ask because Chip will not wear a tie.”
On New Year’s Eve day, my dad quietly passed away and we needed to drive from Fort Lauderdale to Marion Ohio for the service. The night before the service, my quiet as a lamb mom came into our hotel room and stated, very matter of fact like, “You will wear a tie to your dad’s service…won’t you?”
“Of course I will mom.”
Just 7 years later, my mom was on her death bed. We talked and I told her good bye. She asked if she’d see me again, and I told her not we’re on earth, but in heaven.
She wept and said “well you might as well go. This good bye won’t be any easier in five minutes.”
I told her this:
“ mom, I’m going to wear a brand new tie, to all of your services.” She got this smile on her face and said,
“You know, that’s worth dying for!”
Love the article, but the 78-79 were my least favorite Town Cars.
I was working for a tech consulting company when the mass changeover from formal to casual attire happened. Like many workplaces, it started with retaining formal wear for Monday through Thursday, followed by “Casual Fridays”. But as dress codes continued to loosen up, especially in the tech world, my company went to casual clothing five days a week (really seven days a week, since weekend overtime was frequent due to management’s chronic underestimation as to how long things took to get done). Anyway, with casual dress now the norm everyday, there was no longer anything remaining to highlight Friday as the last workday ushering in the weekend, and in a dream I had one night our company decided to do something about that: we’d henceforth have casual Monday through Thursdays, followed by Naked Fridays. I was definitely looking forward to that newly appointed workday, as I was just a twentysomething and had several colleagues that were absolute hotties. But unfortunately, I didn’t seem to run into any of them in my dream and only saw some pudgy oldsters who (like me) would have looked better with their clothes on. The dream may have been inspired by the real-life situation I learned about from someone I was dating at the time who worked for an OS developer called the Santa Cruz Operation, whose office building was a former physical therapy clinic and still had exercise equipment and a hot tub left over from its previous usage. Employees walking around the office after hours (or even after their lunch break) in their swimwear fresh out of the hot tub became enough of a problem that they put up a sign saying ‘do not walk around the office wearing swimsuits’, which I thought was a joke when I first saw it.
1970s Continentals seem to have a relatively high survival rate, but the ’78-79 models are always a letdown for me as they replaced the wonderfully elegant and wall-like Continental-specific dashboard with a generic Ford/Mercury unit that, while not terrible, made the view from behind the wheel look like that from any midsize-or-larger ’70s Ford. I could do without the minimized wheel skirts (also from ’78-79) too, along with the fake Rolls-Royce grille pasted on in 1977. The ’79s also lost the big engine. Any ’70s Continental remains a definitive Detroit land yacht from when cars, and people, dressed nicer than they do now, but make mine a ’75 or 76 which had the finest attire (dash, wheel skirts, grille, opera window).
A co-worker at the time owned a ’79 TC black with gray leather. When a bunch of us wanted to go out to lunch invariably it was her Lincoln that was pressed into service…what a way to go. That was a car that made you feel special, black is the right color on a Lincoln sedan imo! ymmv!
When I was growing up, my grandfather, a foreman tool maker in a cutlery works, wore overalls and/or protective coat for work, over a shirt and tie. At the weekend, which was actually Saturday afternoon and Sunday of course, he wore a suit and tie. I can’t remember him wearing anything else. He wore a suit and tie on the holiday, at Scarborough or Blackpool, on the beach.
Then, several years after he’d passed away, I went to work to wearing a suit and tie in the office, and causal dress outside it. Then dress down Friday started, for me around 10 years ago, and it’s now dress down Monday-Friday. I can’t remember the last time I wore a tie for work, except when meeting customers overseas (who didn’t reciprocate).
Or when I last saw Town Car. 1998 in San Francisco?
My first year at Chaminade High School, in the San Fernando Valley, required dark pants, white shirt, and tie. However, my 2nd year was at University High in San Diego across from University of San Diego and dress was casual. So classmates could wear Levis while I wore a dress button down shirt and slacks as I went to work after school calling on Supermarkets in San Diego County. Otherwise SDSU was casual wear mainly white shorts and Hawaiian shirt.
Grad school at Cal was the same way the first two years. I showed up in my first ever class in my SDSU attire, everyone else jeans or slacks, and I was immediately commented on by the Dean of the School asking if I was a burlesque queen. Yeah, so what. Yet when clinic came around we were all in shirt and tie. All my blazers and sport coats date from 1980-82 and all still fit today. Clinic meant a white coat also. Once graduated I continued the tie for awhile till I realized it gets in the way of what I am doing. So that ended that but the white coat is still used.
Today I have a closet full of dress shirts, dress ties, dress slacks, and coats. Wearing a white coat makes all those clothes superfluous. Almost. On birthdays we dress up, especially my wife, as what Filipina doesn’t like to really dress up. Did that on her birthday and the hostess saw us come in, with the rest of the crowd casual, and her eyes popped. After went for a drink at her friends local bar. I go to the bathroom and come out seeing someone trying to hit on my wife. She is younger, tall and gorgeous in dress but not swayed by talk except mine. She was a Captain in her Philippine ROTC and I know she can spin around and land her foot up against my head at 6’1″. Tough but very generous as I saw last night. While she would be mad if I bought a car like this but if I said let’s dress up, go to dinner, and have a valet park the car she will be all in. I would prefer a slightly ealier model though.
Mate of mine had one of these stored on his lawn complete driving car, but the rust had got a firm hold the roof was spongy even the A posts, the 302 was its most valueable part it ran well but the car was disintegrating around it, LHD used import but it was never going back on the road.
It’s ironic that so many of these late 70s Town Sedans had vinyl only on the back half of the roof. With most pre-war town cars, it was the front half, over the chauffeur, that was leather. It would look much better with all vinyl or all steel.
Your comment made me think. Maybe the vinyl back-half style was inspired by the old landaulet with a folding-down rear section?
70’s Continentals had a tough act to follow. The slab sided 60s were just so iconic there was no way to keep up. Ford had to move on, they could only keep one style for so long, but they had two choices, bad or worse. I think they chose well with bad.
Clothes. Hmm. An Electrician/Building Mechanic for most of my career, I’m a jeans and T shirt kind of guy. The last decade before I retired I was promoted to (Peter principal, don’t go there…) a supervisor/manager. Which I was told was sports shirt and Dockers. If I had it to do over again, it would have been shirt, tie and jacket, with jeans. Trying to keep a foot in both doors as many of my contacts were more formal, but my staff was profoundly casual.
I worked for a time with a guy, a generation or more older, very bright and a good guy who taught me much even as I was already a journeyman. He said his father, an electrician, went to work in a suit and tie. Not sure of ages, but probably WW1 to WW2 era. +/-. Ah, times change. Sometimes better, sometimes worse, sometimes just different.
As I’m sure I said before, I always loved these big old Lincolns. Not that I didn’t like the 1980 to 1989 or even the 1990 to 1997’s. I did. But this 1979 Lincoln is da bomb!
Very interesting colors. Not sure I’ve ever seen one of these in that color.
The history of clothing is fascinating. Up until about 1900 men’s clothing styles changed every few decades, then they seemed to get set in stone. Suit and tie, and don’t go out without a hat. Lapel width and tie width varied, trouser waist line lowered; other then that I feel you had to be in the know to tell new-style from old-style. Not like cars.
It’s been interesting to observe the gradual change toward a more casual style. Losing the tie makes sense; I always hated tight clothing, and it’s not as though the tie served any useful purpose. There might be perhaps one or two of the older men at church who wear ties, other than that we are a remarkably casual lot.
I’m on much safer ground with cars. While the Lincoln is undoubtedly old-style, even I can tell it’s quality old-style. Although it’s dressed up with all the now-dated accoutrements of Broughamhood, it avoids looking tacky and overdressed. It wears them well.
But about that colour’s name, Lincoln: if my apricots looked that colour I’d think they had some nasty disease…
I take casual dress to a lower level than most. Seven days a week I wear denim overalls. They just suit me for the way I’m built. But if the occasion requires it I dress like a Rockefeller. It doesn’t happen often but I’m never sorry that I did and I get a lot of compliments.