(color photos from the web)
The 1961 Lincoln Continental rewrote the book on American luxury cars. It was smaller and of course vastly more restrained and understated in its styling than the flamboyant Cadillac and Exneruberant Imperial. It was something of a Hail Mary pass to save the brand after the excesses of the failed 1958-1960 models. Its positioning was clearly not so much directly at the dominant Cadillac, but more of a quarter or half step above it, in both price, features and exclusivity. And it worked; not so much as a huge commercial success, but in successfully establishing the a new image.
Motor Trend tested the 1964 version, which marked the first semi-significant changes to the original formula.
M/T starts with the observation that I’ve repeated in the headline, that the Continental offers “not flashy, startling luxury but quiet, tasteful luxury that the driver and passenger notice the first time they ride in the car“. And of course, it was distinctive, especially so the convertible, the only four-door of its kind in the US.
The ’64’s change was hardly startling, but not insignificant. It had a 3” longer wheelbase, all of which went into the rear door and rear seat legroom. And the roof was widened, along with more vertical straight window glass, increasing the sense of space inside. No longer was it essentially a four-door coupe, but a legitimate four door sedan (and convertible). It gave a Conti a more traditional, formal appearance.
Another major change was an all-new instrument panel, ditching the two divided pods for driver and passenger and replacing them with a very horizontally-oriented design. It too changed the feel from of a “personal car” to a more traditional luxury car. Undoubtedly Lincoln felt that the ’61’s personal car-four door coupe design was a bit too limiting, especially in terms of rear seat room. And they were right, even if it was a bit sad to see the brilliant original design and concept be changed this much.
The top-grain leather upholstery and all the interior trim were deemed to be of high quality, and the seats were comfortable. And not surprisingly, the Continental was a very comfortable car on the road. Yes, the top whistled a bit at high speed, but that was to be expected, and otherwise the car was extremely quiet.
Of course all that road-hugging weight (5700 lbs) wasn’t exactly going to make the Conti a canyon carver, yet its handling on winding mountain roads was quite good “handled very well on the twisty stuff“. And the brakes were up to its weight and speed too.
The Conti was motivated by a 430 cubic inch MEL V8, with a four barrel carb and rated at 320 hp. That’s one cubic inch more than the ’64 Cadillac’s engine, but in terms of acceleration numbers, there was a rather large gap between them. The Conti took a rather leisurely 12.1 seconds for the 0-60 sprint; the ’64 Cadillac took a mere 8.5 seconds; a very credible time back then. What to account for the difference?
M/T lists the curb weight for their loaded (including a/c)Â Conti as 5700 lbs;Â The Sedan DeVille tested by M/T also had a/c and lots of options, and they listed it as 5050 lbs. Obviously almost 700lbs difference in weight was a factor, but the Cadillac’s 429 made more torque and horsepower, and its new THM-400 was almost certainly quicker-shifting and more efficient than Lincoln’s “Dual-Range Turbo-Drive” automatic (Model PCA-E, a unit used only in Lincolns).
So no, it wasn’t a hot rod Lincoln, but it got the job done in a quiet and understated way, just like the rest of the car. And it wasn’t economical either, with a best test mileage of 11.8 mpg; around town it was 8.7 to 9.5; premium grade, of course.
Along with the other changes, there were now 15″ wheels, mounted with big “low profile” 9.15 – 15 tires.
As equipped, this Conti convertible listed at $7,686, or $75k adjusted to 2022 dollars. That doesn’t sound so expensive from today’s vantage point, but it was pretty zippy for 1964, when the median family income was $6,600 and 7-year auto loans didn’t exist. M/T did point out that the standard equipment was significantly more than “on lesser cars”.
Any complaints? Very few: the trunk had almost no capacity when the top was down. And the heater/ac controls were a bit difficult to use. But other than that, it was smooth sailing.
Related CC reading:
Curbside Classic: 1965 Lincoln Continental – The Last Great American Luxury Car
Looks like plenty of body lean to me, but standards were lower then.
I wonder how much they had to re-engineer the convertible top for the extra wheelbase. Lincoln must not have had the sales volume to justify a separate long wheelbase model like the Fleetwood 60 and later Germans. It would be interesting to know if the impetus for more length came from management, dealers, or public feedback.
I’ve never driven a Ford product from the 60s. Did they have the light and numb power steering their 70s cars did?
From what I’ve read, customers were complaining about the lack of rear-seat legroom in the 1961-63 models. No doubt this was relayed to the dealers. Otherwise, the customers loved the cars. One of the challenges Lincoln faced during this era was that customers liked these Lincolns so much they were holding on to them, and not trading them as frequently.
Remember this Continental was actually designed to be the new Thunderbird, a 2 door.
The 1962 Continental was an improvised 4 door, the suicide doors became the way forward to make that happen.
“this” meaning the 1961-63 Continentals
One of the most dramatic model year design changeovers ever made had to be with the ’61 Continental. Virtually no resemblance between it and the 1960 model other than the texture of their grilles. Going from gaudy complexity to elegant simplicity.
What a beautiful thing.
One might have pause to question whether or not a 6’6″ wide, 18 foot-long, 2.5 ton car was in fact “easy to manouvre in tight situations” – perhaps this meant “..in relation to other 6’6″ 18 foot 2.5 ton competitors” – and one might also think a 19 second quarter mile and a sub-10 mpg mileage to be a trifle inefficient, but one isn’t the buyer and the buyer was one who probably didn’t notice the former and didn’t care about the latter.
I have to giggle at the cornering photo. The poor old passenger has all-but joined the driver in his g-journey across that huge bench seat, although that said, there’s no doubt the driver could fit four feet (and more) upon that whopping brake pedal, so perhaps he was intending the passenger to help in the coming emergency stop…
Well, as the big-car owners here will testify, a large car with good visibility that lets the driver easily assess the position of all four corners IS often pretty easy to maneuver. Obviously, good visibility isn’t going to make a land yacht like the Continental fit into tight compact car spaces, but it can make it much easier to accurately determine where it will and won’t fit. By contrast, a lot of more tidily sized modern cars have awful outward visibility, and in tight maneuvers, you have to rely entirely on your spatial sense because you can’t actually see the nose or tail from the driver’s seat.
If Ford had to cut corners on these cars, better flat glass than, say, Falcon brakes…
The convertible was 300 lbs heavier than the sedan, according to Ate up with Motor. I would have thought more. The convertible had four 25 lbs. weights placed in each corner of the body to dampen vibrations, and the power top had to weigh a lot, not to mention the reinforcements to the body. I had a lot of driving experience with a ’63 sedan and it had a very nice four door coupe feeling. I had ridden in the back for many years when I was younger and found the rear legroom to be fine, ( I was a grade school kid though, at the time) the coach doors make exit very easy. The ’64 had a longer rear compartment, a more squared off roof, and an uglier flat dash. That was probably done to make the middle front seat position more comfortable to a passenger.
These seem to have become more popular lately. I was at a local Cars and Coffee event and three of them showed up to the event. The cars are costly to restore and the top mechanism is very complex. But they are great looking cars and are featured in the Lincoln Lawyer TV series.
Gas mileage was low, but pretty average for similar vehicles. A new Navigator will double that mileage with much better acceleration. I’ve hit 20 mpg. in my ’05 Navigator on long highway trips.
Interestingly, the difference in the published shipping weights of the sedan and the convertible was all over the place in the ’60s:
1961: 288 lb
1962: 284 lb
1963: 410 lb
1964: 338 lb
1965: 400 lb
1966: 395 lb
1967: 456 lb
That’s a pretty big spread, and I have no authoritative explanation for why there’s so much variation in the published figures, except to theorize that Lincoln-Mercury went back and forth on how much structural bracing the convertible needed.
I will say that the Continental, like the 1958–1966 Thunderbird with which it shared some structural commonality, was still hugely overbuilt, since Ford’s didn’t yet have the capability of doing sophisticated structural analysis on a unitary structure that big; it was a “keep adding metal till things stop breaking” approach. Convertible versions of the 1964–1966 “Flair Bird,” which had the same top mechanism (though obviously not the same top), had shipping weights 110 to 120 lb greater than the hardtop
A white Continental convertable from this era isn’t complete without LBJ behind the wheel, sipping from a tumbler of Scotch and soda (Cutty Sark) slowly cruising around his ranch…..
All of the color pictures I used except the one at the very top are of LBJ’s actual car.
Slowly? I vividly remember reading in the newspaper at the time that he hit 90 taking some reporters on a tour of his ranch.
LBJ also had an Amphicar at the ranch. He delighted terrifying passengers by driving headlong into a lake feigning brake failure.
Although the size of tramp freighters, these were in fact mighty fine cars .
Once you rode in or drove one it set a benchmark you’ll never forget .
Smooth as silk, *much* quieter than anything GM ever dreamed of and as mentioned : with decent tires and truck shocks (gas weren’t a thing yet) they really did handle amazingly well .
I owned a ’63, ’64 & ’65, all hard tops, all were fantastic and nearly impossible to kill .
The ’65 got rushed into production front disc brakes that were suitable for large trucks, they’d haul the car down in a hurry .
LBJ was a madman behind the wheel .
-Nate
Read Robert Caro
the “madman” didn’t only happen when driving
Yes Caro’s prodigious biography, as yet unfinished (waiting for the last volume with bated breath for 10 years and counting now!) is a must read, especially for us Boomers who went through the Vietnam “experience”. LBJ was, as was Nixon, an incredibly complex individual. He did love his Lincolns though, as did JFK, oddly!
My uncle restored a ’64 Continental convertible. Black, white top and black leather interior. He passed away some 10 years ago but my widow aunt (who is now 89) decided to keep it and drive it on nice Summer days. She’s had many offers from folks to buy it from her. And she found someone to help her maintain it.
Jay Leno managed to acquire a ’66 4 door convertible. He also managed to find a guy with expertise who would drive throughout the country with a truck or van full of parts just to fix the top mechanism on these.
Even though I prefer the 61-63’s smaller, sportier look, the stylists did a magnificent job in updating this car, adding needed passenger and trunk space but keeping it close to the original design. Stunningly beautiful car, then and now.
Neat source for the changes:
https://octopup.org/img/car/lincoln/info/1964-Lincoln–Product-Data-Book.pdf
Thats a beautiful automobile ! Would love to tour the town in that ’64 Continental ! They were expensive to own even back in their day and we’re usually purchased only by wealthy people . Well it’s always nice to dream but for now , I must return to ” REALITY. ” !! Happy Motoring !
The President was guided to a squadron of helicopters by a young Air Force corporal who, reaching the president’s helicopter said “This one is yours sir”. “They are all mine, son”. – Quotes.org
Nice to see a republish of a review articl I had read a generation ago. One of the commentators here said something about the flat glass being a cost-cutting move. He was absolutely right. In ’64 flat glass was cheaper to make than curved glass, and that was the main reason the design head of the Lincoln studio insisted on flat glass for ’64 and ’65 cars. There was another reason, too, but it may take too much byte space here to elaborate. Anyway, per Eugene Bordinat’s directive, flat glass appeared on ’64; and, just in case anybody tried to criticize the boxing of the design (i.e., making it look more like a box and less like a work of art), he likely ordered the publicity to focus on pushing the increased-headroom propaganda. Luckily, that directive lasted only two years, as flat glass was already on its way out (that also makes for an interesting story).
The author mentioned the differences in performance numbers between Cadillac and Lincoln. Though correctly mentioning the mass difference, he failed to mention the engine difference. Keep in mind that horsepower ratings back then were still *gross,* meaning a naked (totally unloaded) prototype engine being run, and that rating applied across the board for production engines. But one popular misconception is that the difference between gross rating and today’s net rating is a flat, universal difference. Common sense will declare that not to be true. Different engine designs will handle similar loads differently; plus, the means of construction can add even more difference. The Caddy engine could be run naked, with no loads of any kind. Not the case with the MEL engine of the ’64 Lincoln; every production engine was hot-tested with loads applied, one in particular being critical: The power-steering pump is the only thing holding the engine’s front oil seal in place; ergo, the Lincoln engines had to do loaded ratings. How accurate those loads were can be debated, but the fact is that Lincoln engines were significantly closer to net-hp ratings than any other engine of the time. Now, acceleration times may be affected by other components, but top speed was surprising…well, except in ‘verts, of course.
I submit that just because of some weird engineering re the front seal, it doesn’t make a “close to to net HP’ rating.
Lincoln could (and I suspect, did) rate their HP sans air cleaners, mufflers, and all the other omissions that gross HP ratings allowed.
How accurate those loads were can be debated, but the fact is that Lincoln engines were significantly closer to net-hp ratings than any other engine of the time.
What do you base this on? Do you have access to the net ratings of these? Did Lincoln even test them for net ratings?
I have to assume that even though the power steering pump was attached, they likely removed the belt? In any case, a power steering pump requires very little power as long as the steering is not being activated.
The reality is that the MEL engine, although it had its strengths, simply was not as powerful as the new 429 Cadillac engine.
Even if the power steering pump arrangement made the Lincoln’s gross rating closer to its actual net power, I can’t see it being anything close to the 25 hp difference in gross horsepower — and in any case, the Continental was still a bunch slower than the ’64 Cadillac. Some of that was obviously due to greater weight (a Continental sedan was around 400 lb heavier than a Sedan de Ville, even though it was still lighter than the convertible), but not all of it.
Car Life tested a ’64 Continental sedan in their July 1964 issue. It was 390 lb lighter than the convertible tested in this Motor Trend article, but it wasn’t that much quicker: CL got 0–60 in 11.8 seconds and a standing quarter mile ET of 18.1 seconds. The sedan did have the 2.89 rather than the convertible’s 3.11, which would have probably knocked another few tenths off those times. However, that would still have left it about 3 seconds slower to 60 and about a second and a half slower through the quarter mile.
I wouldn’t put too much stock in listed top speed unless it’s explicitly an observed figure rather than a calculated one. (One of my major peeves with the otherwise useful Car Life tests is that they’ll often list what are obviously calculated top speeds and have little relationship to the real world.)
This test doesn’t specify an observed top speed, but Motor Trend tested a ’65 Continental with the 2.89 axle and noted an actual observed maximum speed of just 103 mph @ 4,000 rpm. Their 1964 Sedan de Ville had an observed actual top speed of 115 mph. Even taking into account the convertible’s poorer aerodynamics, that’s a huge difference.
It took me many years to come to appreciate these early Continentals, because for many years they just looked like older, less developed and more mundane versions of the Lincoln that I vividly remember, my parents’ ’66. And being picked up from kindergarten in it. What presence.
My favorite design element on these 64/65s are the stylized gauges below the speedo. Classic shape, jeweled details. The early 70s continued the shape.
As I said, they estimated the amount of load the engine would carry, and I never claimed it to be 100% accurate…but it was far more accurate than any other engine built in America, save for the 368 used in the Mark II which underwent the same kind of hot-testing, only more stringent (and more costly). And yes, the steering pump being in place *is* one of those loads that made their ratings more accurate. Other things that can affect performance are the shift patterns of the gears (as well as the number of available gears) and the axle ratios, along with the general overall design of the vehicle in question.
Honestly, I’m not sure what conditions those reviewers tested their cars, but I’ve never seen mpg’s that low. My own ’66 sedan delivers a consistent *net* average of 14 mpg, well above the best ratings the articles of the day posted. As I don’t have access to the test roads the EPA uses, I cannot verify the gross economy; but if in all real-world conditions my car can do as high as it does, matching a Navigator’s best EPA rating may be plausible under the less-realistic EPA test conditions.