Don’t call it a Lincoln.
The Continental Mark II was an ambitious project of the Ford Motor Company to create an exclusive luxury coupe that would rival any in the world. Designed as a successor to the 1939-48 Lincoln Continental, the Mark II was given it’s own new division within Ford, ‘Continental’, and was hand-assembled. It was powered by the same 368 cubic inch V8 used by Ford in its Lincoln cars, and the car was equipped with many features. The only option was air conditioning. It’s said that Ford lost $1000 on each Mark II, and 3005 cars (including prototypes) were produced in 1956 and 1957. After the run, the Continental Division was folded into Lincoln, and the Mark II was succeeded by the 1958 Mark III, which was aligned with other regular production Lincolns.
Now, in the past when I have taken pictures, I have not been diligent enough to really record the details of my shooting. I will do my best to include what information I can.
This picture of a 1956 Continental Mark II was shot during the 2017 Kars on King event in Oshawa, Ontario. I used my Fuji FinePix S1500 in Auto mode, which gave a setting of ƒ/2.8, shutter speed 1/160, ISO64. I brought the image into Adobe Photoshop for adjustments and cropping, and then finally used Topaz Adjust to make more dramatic adjustments to the final image.
The above image is available as a 20″x16″ poster. For information please email shootyourcarmister@gmail.com. The original picture can be seen below.
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Oh man, do I love these cars! Very restrained use of fins and chrome, great hood/deck proportions…just a classic design by former Packard stylist John Reinhart.
As you have noted, even at $10,000 a car–a lot of money for 1956-57–FoMoCo lost money on every car. These were really hand-built.
Non-concours examples of these are, surprisingly, not expensive to acquire but are very expensive to restore and to maintain.
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The Mark II was really an instant classic, just a beautiful design.
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