I would be surprised if these two Lincoln Mark Vs captured by Eric Clem belonged to two different people. More likely, someone loves them enough to keep two in their household.
I’ve always felt these cars had a sinister look about them, but as they seem very private and imposing, I can understand the attraction. Today, they probably draw even more attention to their driver than they did when new, giving them a rare chance to continue fulfilling their mission almost four decades later. Although really not my style, the Mark V is one of those rare cars which looks better in white. What do you think?
A photo from the outside of the “Legitimate Businessman Social Club and Lounge”
Photos look like they were taken at Seattle’s Green Lake.
Yes they were!
There were so many great colours offered on the Marks, it’s a shame to choose white!
Was the black one involved in a drive-by shooting ?
I’m pretty sure that these Lincolns from the seventies are the most popular classic land yachts here. Most of them are in a good to excellent condition. Here’s a nice line-up I found on the website of the Dutch Lincoln Club. (Photo: Stichting Lincoln Club Nederland)
…and in this country we think it’s hard to keep one of those things in gasoline….
Hobby cars, all of them. Think 3,000 miles or less a year. Anything older than 40 years no road tax, regardless the fuel (gasoline, LPG or diesel, no Lincoln diesels of course). A younger one, but at least 30 years old, max. 120 euro road tax a year, provided that it runs on gasoline.
Furthermore a classic car insurance with a max. mileage a year, mostly 5,000 km (3,125 miles). And you must have another car as a daily driver.
Well I fill up my 77 DeVille a couple of times each month. In US dollars I’ll pay about 250 USD each fillup, about 500 USD each month just in gas…..
First class always cost more! 🙂
I just saw that the green one in the back has a chrome Rubber Duck as hood ornament. For the real Big Mac(k) feeling !
The white one has a license plate that’s only a few months old. That means nothing at all since Washington has a rolling replate program, and the plate may only have been replaced because it was time to give the dmv more money.
Frank Cannon and Jock Ewing agree.
I was shocked to come across this roadsalt covered but solid looking Lincoln on the highway yesterday. Sorry for only getting the one poor photo. The car was travelling much slower than traffic.
White is the least impressive color for the Mk V. There are a lot of these and Continentals and Town Coues around in great condition. These were the last of the true land yachts after GM downsized, and people preserved them thinking that they would be worth a lot of money some day. That did not turn out to be the case and where I live they will sit for sale for over a year or more. There are also a lot of 77-78 Eldorados for sale and they usually go for more money and sell more quickly.
the white one has a vacuum leak, it’s wide awake. 🙂 These and the continental town car have to be , along with the trans am the most popular cars from the mid to late 70’s. Seeing more and more of them at car shows every year.
Black is good, with some of the blues being even better. White is so blah.
I mostly agree. My Grandpa Bob bought a new Mark V in 1977. Navy blue with navy blue top, navy blue leather interior and the chrome alloy wheels. As an impressionable little kid, I really bonded with that car and my grandmother’s black 1977 Thunderbird. The T-Bird had the rare bucket seats and console, in white with red dash and carpets. Both those cars cemented my love for big luxurious FoMoCo products–and hidden headlights!
However, despite my preference for darker colors I still like the white one, as I’ve always had a thing for triple-white cars (top, interior and paint). But colors like the Dark Red Metallic, Crystal Apricot and Dark Jade are much more compelling…or how about a Dark Turquoise Metallic Pucci Designer Edition?
I thumbed through oldcarbrochures before my original comment; there is a Ginvenchi (spelling?) Edition that is a terrific blue. The colors you suggest are definitely appealing. This is one car where I’ve never really seen a bad color, I just have a intermittent bias about white (which looks rather good on Town Cars, incidentally).
Givenchy
When these were first out, a small town Ford/Lincoln/Mercury dealer owned a lake cottage next door to one my father owned. He showed up one summer in a new Mark V in that metallic pink. Even that one didn’t look bad.
Or the navy blue with tan vinyl top and interior combo that Ford pushed on everything from the Mark V to the Mustang II Ghia in the mid/late ’70s.
I was always disappointed that they didn’t use real Pucci fabrics in the interiors!
You can always tell when the same guy has a couple of old cars like that. It would be fun to sit and watch people walk by to see how many notice or stop to look. I bet a lot. If the cars always sit in the same spot I’m sure they feel like family to the neighborhood by now.
And how about that Mark V? If there was ever a car that photographed better than it looked it’s this one. I have read that the Mark V outsold the Mark IV but can tell you it sure didn’t feel that way in California. I’m guessing the Mark IV got stuck with a couple of recession years during its life.
The Mark IV was one of those cars that I was never crazy about (I preferred the Mark III) but could understand why others liked it. It had a svelte and dare I say athletic look from the long hood+short deck portions (different from a Mark III), aggressive fender forms and the kicked up belt line. The stance was good and for someone older who wanted to be pampered but still feel young it was the perfect car.
The ’72 cars had those deliciously delicate bumpers that looked like they were from a concept car. Ironically the Mark IV looked good with 5mph bumpers too and I believe the ’73 outsold the ’72. The rear bumper came out so nice that they continued it with the Mark V when they could have done something completely different. Believe it or not the Mark IV was a hot car in import crazy LA.
The Mark V was no where near as popular out here. As a young car guy I was stupefied by the size, which doesn’t looks so bad in the pics. It came across as a full-size luxury sedan rather than as a personal luxury coupe. The Seville became the personal luxury car of choice for folks who liked American design, at least out here. The Mark V just made you feel old.
Then there was the strong association with the rest of the Ford fleet for things like door handles, moldings, glass, lighting and bumper treatments. It’s true the Mark IV had a lot of commonality with the Tbird, but not the rest of the Fords. The Mark V was no longer special, just big. You don’t feel that so much now because the Marks at the curb aren’t surrounded by LTD IIs, Elites, Cougars, etc. like they were back then.
Then there was the rather fascinating exterior cheapness, which started in ’73 with the LTD (see JPC’s excellent write up) and peaked with cars like the ’75 LTD opera coupe and Mark V. The poster child features for this cheap, “disposable” impression were the front turn indicator lenses on the Mark V.
Obviously plastic to anyone… but without them the Mark V would lose its look. It was a design done around those fender tips which had to be done in plastic for safety/regulation/cost reasons. Ford bet the look would be worth the plastic impression and perhaps it was to the very old.
But to me it’s not unlike bad plastic surgery where you know the people who have it done don’t realize how it comes off to others… or don’t care.
I agree about the 72’s bumpers, for me the pick of the lot. I found a clean bronze MkV recently, I was surprised how slab sided it appeared. Had a red matchbox toy, but standing next to the real thing made me feel the sides were too deep.
I think these two cars were actually presented to Salt n Pepa by the record company after the success of ‘Push It’.
This has to be one of the most beautiful cars ever built. I love these. Far better looking than a mark I’ve. Make mine red with white top and interior with a 460. Also love the bail blasts model.
I always liked these cars. They’re just so brash, decadent, and in-your-face, and manage to look classy and elegant at the same time.
My only gripe with them is the delicate, underpowered 400M engines that the Smogifornia models are saddled with.
As I’ve posted before, my dad bought a new Mark V in 78 – a Cartier edition. For $187 extra (see window sticker) he got the very smooth 460 (not available in CA) that provided adequate power and reasonably decent mileage on the highway (he used the car almost exclusively for road trips).
While my favorite in terms of appearance is the Mark III, I thought the V was sleeker looking than the IV, which I always found kind of bloated (maybe the Cannon connection:-). Make no mistake, these cars were big. The doors were really long and heavy and a menace on a hill or in a tight parking lot. Dad offered to give me the car in 81 but the carport where I was living was in no way adequate to house this beast nor would the car have been practical as a daily driver in the city.
I still see these cars from time to time in SoCal and they seem to have held up better, including the plastic pieces, than Cadillacs of the same period. Or maybe the owners just prize and take care of them more.
“Nothing exceeds like excess!”
I always liked Mark V. Out of all the Marks, I like Mark V and Mark VIII the best. I was not a fan or Mark VII. That car still looks great today. That car was imposing, but very popular back in the day. Ford did something right with this one. The thing about this car compared to Lincolns of today is this car looked like Lincoln and had exclusive things that made them Lincolns.
After the beautiful 56 there wasn’t a Lincoln that I liked til the MK VII.It would be boring if we all liked the same cars
Ten years too new.
Let me join in with those who’ve already professed their love for Mark V s. The Mark V is a more cohesive design over the MK IV because of the uniform use of angular lines -EVERYWHERE- There are only three rounded lines on the body: the Continental hump on the trunk, the opera windows, and the wheel arches.
I owned a ’79 (which got wrecked) and I continually search for its replacement -and frankly Mark Vs are plentiful in a rainbow of colors, let alone the Designer and Collector series, which each had special colors.
Interestingly, the Mark V’s weak points were an inadequate A/C system and the ride wasn’t anything close to the that of the concurrent Town Car. No one would expect performance out of these cars, but I’d venture to say that the expectation of an isolation-from-the-road ride was an established FoMoCo hallmark and certainly an expectation of a Lincoln. Not so with the Mark; here, they showed their T-Bird heritage: you’d feel expansion cracks on freeways, and although they floated laterally, the back end would hop going over anything close to washboard-like pavement.
An old friend of mine has a 1979 Mk V Bill Blass with the Windsor 400 in it, ’78 was the last year of the 460. These were underrated cars; they are really well built, much better than the Cadillacs of the era. I know this from having driven both the Mk V and his 1978 Sedan Deville, the Lincoln wins hands down. The brakes, four wheel disks, are much better than the Cadillac brakes with rear drums, and too small at that.
My friend also loves the 400, and his car has Australian heads, high compression pistons, all the high performance stuff. It makes a good, gentle 350 hp and 400+ lb/ft of torque. It’s backed by a Gear Vendors splitter, which makes the C6 act just like a six speed, it’s brilliant how good it is. A lot of fun for him, for sure.
I’m not really a fan of these but Black looks best on em, may be its one to drive and one for spares, I saw a pale blue MK V recently not really a standout in that colour
Not a fan either until the MK VII was made but big cars look better in dark colours.
I loved my former boyfriends V in white over turquoise. I think it may have been repainted but it was beautiful and definitely an attention getter!
During the 1980s, my family lived in Richardson, Texas. One of the houses on our street always had a couple of identical Mark V in white and light blue parking on the driveway with their front ends pointing at each other. The oddest thing is that we had never seen any human being there or that none of these Lincolns actually left the driveway.
Back in the mid to late 80s, there was a huge, stately old house on North Meridian Street (Indianapolis’ premier residential street) with two old Cadillacs parked out front – a first generation Eldorado and a 1969 or 70 Fleetwood sedan. I never saw them move and they were parked far enough from the street that it was hard to judge condition. But the scene looked fresh from a photo shoot from a Cadillac brochure or ad from that time.
1978 Diamond Jubilee Edition for the win! Wish I had kept that one.