The Lincoln was ugly but a real head turner, just like my girlfriend. Nobody ever turned down a ride or double date in that black Linkin! Diva you are correct of course, Caddi’s are pure silk. My dad sold the Lincoln in ‘66 and not a used Devilke and drove it 259k after adding his own fuel injection kit.

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Boys, boys, Hold on a second here. Did you ever drive a ‘58 Lincoln? I did! In 1965, my dad bought one just like this from our neighbor Mac for $800. Dad sold his ‘59 dodge Royal (black beauty) since the rust had started. One trip was Kalamazoo to Marquette (450 miles) at night doing 80+ mph on 2 lane roads in the moonlight. The car just rolled out the road and rode smooth all the way. I could lay down in the back seat with my girlfriend and listen to WLS rockin in. The antenna went up/down with a motor. 7 motorized widows. Electric everything. 30 cent gas and 8 mpg. Read drive and 4800 lbs means a great car in snow. Life was good.

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There’s a story that some states had issues with the size of these cars, threatening to mandate truck lights on them. Lincoln wanted to outdo Cadillac in every way; and they did just that, except in sales. But the recession that hit the country at the same time caused pain for most of the industry, so it wasn’t a Lincoln-exclusive problem.

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What they did still wasn’t enough. In addition to their inexperience with large unibody construction, the welding machinery at Wixom apparently was not functioning properly, forcing dealers to rent out welding equipment all over the country to try and repair the structures as best they could.

They did, however, learn a lot of lessons in how to sturdy up a large unibody to a reliable level; the ’60s models were testament to that.

I know someone may ask this: Why did they do unibody for these cars? Because many knowledgeable engineers in the automotive industry back then believed unibody construction was the way of the future (go figure 🙄!). Engineers at Ford wanted to get the jump on the rest of the industry, which was why they built the Wixom plant. They had already committed to making the Thunderbird a unibody car, but those alone were not enough to recapture the cost of the plant. They needed another car to build, one that could keep Wixom busy but didn’t necessarily have too large a demand in order to keep construction in control. The Lincoln qualified.

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If it was a ’58 or ’59, the problem was intrinsic to the rear-suspension design. The coil-spring design they adopted, to offer an air-suspension option to compete with Cadillac’s offering (which was troublesome in itself), tended to twist and give disconcerting feelings of instability, forcing them to ditch that setup by ’60 in favor of more-stable leaf springs.

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Aw, c’mon, Edsels are conservative-looking compared to these cars. But I still like seeing examples of both, at least in a nostalgic perspective.

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You aren’t alone. The design is enough to make Edsels look conservative. It was so bizarre that many just couldn’t abide it; it didn’t help matters, either, that a recession suddenly hit the country when these cars hit the showrooms. One designer who worked for Ford back then (but wasn’t involved with these cars) said he attended a meeting where the spokesman said, regarding the first several thousand Lincolns built that year, they should have been pushed into the Rouge River…a bit extreme in my opinion, but it showed that Ford was quickly embarrassed by this design. The Imperials and higher-trim Chryslers did look better, but they had their share of problems as well–namely, rusting with a vengeance. Really the only thing to say about these Lincolns is that they outdid Cadillac in everything except sales.

Ironically, the same men responsible for this series also designed the revolutionary ’61 Lincolns.

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Probably a ’59, because what you described was either a Limousine or Town Car variant, both of which were offered only in ’59 and ’60. I dare say they were the largest unibody cars ever, bar none.

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Well it was1958 the year of the Edsel pandemic out break 😂

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God Bless America

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agree on all, but in this day of “lose me in the parking lot” styling on silver and beige cars, I find something admirable about this car’s excesses

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