With the Continental Division dead, a cost-weary and (newly) publicly traded Ford Motor Company headed into the 1958 model year determined to unveil a solid luxury car showing against its primary rival, Cadillac. However, the “Continental Mark III by Lincoln” was a Continental in name only: It wore the same metal and was produced at the same new factory, Wixom Assembly, as the rest of the Lincoln models (Capri, Premiere) that year.
Brass at Ford hoped the Continental name on the Mark III would make customers believe it was something special, like the Cadillac Eldorado with which it competed. As mentioned last time, aside from its Continental name, the Mark III for 1958 used One Simple Trick to lure buyers into its leather seats: a Breezeway window. First up today, pricing problems.
Not a problem at Ford generally, but rather pricing within the small Lincoln lineup given the identical engineering and almost identical looks of the three cars on offer. The most basic Capri asked $4,803 ($49,087 adj.) that year, while the better equipped Premiere was $5,483 ($56,037 adj.). However, the Mark III was $6,283 ($64,213 adj.) before options. Recall the original directive at Continental Division was to sell a Mark III for $6,800 ($68,739 adj.), which ballooned to $9,800 ($99,065 adj.) after the original car was developed. At its 1958 ask, the Mark III was about 37 percent cheaper than the hand-assembled 1957 Mark II.
And while that sum was cheaper than the likes of the new Eldorado Biarritz convertible at $7,500 ($76,651 adj.), the Biarritz was considerably more desirable than the over-the-top 1958 Mark III. By the way, the average American household income in 1958 was $4,600 ($47,012 adj.).
Part of the problem was the development cost of the 1958 Lincolns. Ford decided to switch its luxury arm from body-on-frame construction to a unibody that year. The new Lincolns were very large for a unibody car (perhaps the largest to date), and Lincoln lost over $60 million ($613,208,391 adj.) in the period between 1958 and 1960. A big part of that was product development.
But just as the new Lincolns debuted and the domestic luxury car class got larger, heavier, and more expensive than it had been in some time, there was a big recession. The global Recession of 1958 proved itself a fast, sharp downturn. It ended up as the biggest recession in the post-WWII economic boom from 1945 to 1970.
One of the leading factors of the recession was a steep decline in new car sales. 1958’s sales figures were down 31 percent over the prior year. Automakers rode a high of 8 million US sales in 1955, but that slumped to 4.3 million in 1958.
The middle class started to hold onto their cars en masse in 1958, instead of trading for a new one. During 1958 Lincoln produced only 20,179 cars, which was down 36 percent over 1957. Ford itself was down 38 percent that year, compared to a 22 percent drop for Chevrolet, and a 45.1 percent decline at Plymouth.
It turned out to be the wrong time to dump a bunch of development money into a new unibody design, but Ford wasn’t to know that. The new 131-inch wheelbase on the 1958 Lincolns and their enormous and overworked bodies made them some of the largest cars on the road. Lincoln was bigger than a Cadillac, bigger than an even an Imperial (the brand that usually came with the most length).
Capri, Premier, and Continental Mark III all had identical length, width, and height in 1958. All were 229 inches long, 80.1 inches wide, and 56.5 inches high. In comparison, the more prestigious Eldorado in Series 62 guise was 222.1 inches overall, and 80 inches wide. Even the Sixty-Special four-door reached only 225.3 inches in the final year of its sixth-gen guise for ’58. The D-body Imperial of 1958 came up a bit short, at 225.9 inches and 81.3 inches in width.
The Lincoln lineup rode on a wheelbase that was five inches longer than the year before, and the Capri and Premiere were about 4.5 inches longer than they were in 1957. Despite the increase in wheelbase and exterior dimensions in all directions, that didn’t always translate to an increase in interior measurements. For example, in a standard Premiere leg room decreased by nearly half an inch up front, while hip room decreased by 0.7 inches.
Shoulder room increased for front passengers in the ’58 Premiere, but rear passengers had less headroom. Gains from the unibody transition were seen mostly in increased shoulder room for all occupants. In fact, the shoulder room set a record in 1958 (63.1″ up front, 63″ in rear) that has never been bested by a passenger car to date.
As one might expect, the enormous new Lincoln lineup weighed a lot. The lightest two doors with a minimum of equipment weighed in at 4,900 pounds, while a fully-equipped Continental Mark III toured the country with 5,200 pounds of heft.
All Lincolns shared the same 430 cubic-inch (7.0 liters) MEL series V8. MEL stood for Mercury-Edsel-Lincoln, an engine family developed as the replacement for the Y-block Lincoln engine in production since 1952. The MEL featured wedge-shaped combustion chambers, and its piston determined the compression and combustion chamber shape. That was an engineering choice common to other V8 engines introduced at the end of the Fifties. An OHV design with two valves per cylinder, the MEL was built in displacements of 383, 410, 430, and 462 cubic inches.
The 430 version of the engine was fitted to all Lincolns from the 1958 to 1960 model years. Attached to the large V8 was the MX version of Ford’s three-speed Cruise-O-Matic, which was branded as the Turbo-Drive under Lincoln usage. The three-speed wrangled 375 horsepower in 1958.
Body styles for the Continental Mark III included a two-door hardtop, a four-door sedan, and a four-door hardtop that received a special name: Landau. The only body style exclusive to the Continental was a convertible. That halo model was the most expensive, and proved to be unique: It was the only time a Mark series car was offered as a factory convertible. The importance of the Breezeway as a distinguishing feature could not be overstated, as it was even engineered into the convertible version of the Mark III.
Options on the 1958 Continental Mark III were limited but included an FM radio to add to the standard AM band that cost around $125 ($1,277 adj.). Air conditioning was an optional extra for the big spenders. Also optional on the Continental was a system exclusive to Lincoln and Mercury cars, and only offered in the late Fifties: Auto-Lube! What a great name for a feature.
Its full name was Automatic Multi-Luber, and it asked the driver to press a button when things needed to be slippery. More specifically, a dash-mounted button marked Auto-Lube controlled the distribution of grease from a reservoir under the hood. Said reservoir was used to lubricate the necessary components in the more complex suspension systems of late-Fifties cars. The system was developed by Ford and Lincoln Industrial Corporation (not related), the latter of which invented the lever-operated grease gun.
Think of all the ball joints, springs, arms, tie rods, etc. that were part of an independent suspension design – no solid axles here! All those parts had grease fittings and needed to be greased repeatedly to prevent wear and the unpleasant sounds that happen where there’s not enough lubrication. This was the time before the grease in your ball joint (or similar) lasted the life of the component.
For the non-luxurious motorist, visits to a mechanic with a grease gun were required at rather short intervals. But the 1958 Lincoln driver could keep on going with Auto-Lube. When the button was pressed, a system of lines underneath the Lincoln delivered grease to every grease point in the front suspension. When the process was completed, a green light on the dash told the driver all was A-okay.
It was recommended the Lincoln driver remember to press the button once a day while the car was in operation. Each grease container would make up to 300 applications of grease to the front suspension. The system did not remain on offer for very long, but it’s interesting to consider what might happen to the lines as they sat with grease in them for a few years.
Lincoln could’ve used some grease to help slide cars out of showrooms in 1958 as sales tumbled. However, even with the recession, the Continental was the volume seller of the brand: 62 percent of Lincolns in 1958 were Mark IIIs, a total of 12,550 examples. That figure was composed of 1,283 standard sedans, 5,891 Landau sedans, 2,328 hardtop coupes, and 3,048 of the flagship convertible.
Lincoln headed a different direction in 1959 that would see a “new” Mark take the stage, and introduce a new name we all know today: Town Car. We’ll start there next time.
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Very good series Corey never heard about the Auto-Lube. I wonder if there were problems with this system and how expensive it was to make it. Seems if the system was reliable that it would have become available on other Ford products.
As someone who worked in quick-lubes back in the day, I remember that many old boats like this had more than a dozen grease fittings. I can’t imagine an automated system to do that- it seems impossibly fragile and prone to failure.
“The three-speed wrangled 375 horsepower in 1958.”
TTAC Book of Wisdom, Chapter 37 — Gross vs. Net HP
Well, you could always contribute your own articles, versus complaining about everyone else’s.
That’s not exactly a ‘complaint’ it’s more of a ‘clue’ – which might irritate Corey at first but then he will generally go off and dig around and something interesting might come of it (we see Syke chiming in with another useful nugget of information — the process works). And, I only bug him every-other-writeup at most.
Personally I am interested to learn how drivetrain losses in EVs compare to drivetrain losses in ICE vehicles — and by drivetrain losses I don’t mean the whole thing, but the part from where-the-reported-HP-figures-come-from, apples-to-apples to the extent possible (let’s say ‘flywheel’ for ICE and ‘TBD’ for EV).
[I’m sure you considered all this before you stuck your nose into it. After you solve my personal shortcomings, you might want to turn your attention to your own business of selling debt out there in Colorado because don’t look now but the old white Fed guy that Trump ‘chose’ and Biden ‘kept’ just rocked your world and not in a good way and is about to do it again and then some more after that but hey, keep after me while you’re being paid to do something else — that’s always a good idea except when it isn’t.]
Your concern for my job is touching.
Like I said…if you like the quality of articles you’re seeing, perhaps you should contribute one yourself.
Everything was gross horsepower back then. More honest measurements of engine power didn’t come on line until around 1972.
The horsepower measurement standard changed in the early 1970’s. @ToolGuy has a valid point.
Didn’t realize you’d have another entry about this monstrosity but the Auto-Lube thing is really interesting. Still waiting on tenterhooks for the next generation, arguably the most beautiful domestic car of the entire postwar era.
Agree the Auto-Lube is fascinating and its something I never heard of That would make an interesting series for Corey auto features that existed but never became popular and that we never heard of.
Don’t get the “more complex suspension” bit. The Lincoln rear axle was still a solid axle and not independent in any way whatsoever — it had rear trailing arms and coil springs. But so did the ’58 Chevy and the ’49 Volvo 444. Big deal. Front suspensions had been independent for well over a decade except at Ford, the last to drop the Model T transverse spring setup.
The ’58 Lincoln front suspension’s ball joints and tie-rod ends were still of the non-sealed variety, so featured grease fittings. Then Ford made a hullabaloo (giant ads in LIFE magazine) about sealed grease-filled ball joints for the ’61s, several years after European cars had gone that way, including some English Fords. Much shaking of heads — it’ll never work, said all the old hands. No need for grease fittings there anymore, so they’ll wear out in a year. Good thing they were wrong! Some cars still had king pin or trunnion suspensions and grease fittings were still needed for that (Studebaker and AMC respecively). UJs in the driveline were the last things to get sealed bearings without grease fittings. All that and man on the moon — dang, the ’60s were great!
The Autolube system was predated by the similar system on Rolls Royces, where besides the front suspension gubbins, the rear semi-elliptic springs were encased in a leather gaiter full of good ole grease. Stopped the constant squeaking of leaves sliding over leaves until plastic interliners came along and the ’65 Rollers went IRS anyway.
Once sealed ball-joints became standard on Detroit cars, no need for an Autolube system or a visit to the “lube” bay at the local garage. Great gobs of congealed grease that used to decorate front suspensions and UJs went the way of the dodo. I used to do my Dad’s car at the rural service station where I made friends with the owner. Learned a lot of basics hanging round there from 1960 onwards. Worth the half-mile walk each way from home after school – it was the only place with a pop cooler and tater chips for miles since town was seven miles off. It was a long time ago when houses ran single file for miles and miles down the main highway and arbitrary chunks were given civic names — ours was Brighton NS. Still is. And no, I swear I didn’t hang out there to see the owner’s daughter.Saw her everyday on the schoolbus to the Regional high school in town. Ahem.
You young uns born since the ’70s when solid state color TVs were the norm have almost no idea what life used to be like, or the fact that general rural road paving was a ’50s through ’60s phenomenon. At least where I grew up.
Now I kind of want a leather gaiter.
Ford Galaxie’s were solid axle 5 link coil springs.
@conundrum–Being 70 I do have more than an idea of what life was like in the 50s and 60s and what a big deal it was to have a gravel road asphalted but I did not know about the existence of leather gaiter or any automatic or pre lube systems from the 50s. I have a lot of experience with vehicles I have owned with grease fittings and greasing them and yes I remember when sealed suspension parts became more popular. The last vehicle I owned that had grease fittings was a 99 Chevy S-10 and I actually prefer having grease fillings because the part being greased usually lasts longer. As for TVs my family mainly had 1 TV which was black and white until the early 70s when we got a color console and by the mid 70s we got an Amana Radar Range (microwave) which was expensive for the time and large and heavy. I also remember having to defrost the refrigerator, my mother having to iron clothes before permanent press fabrics, the bread box in the kitchen, the outdoor clothes line which everyone had, party lines,most people having just 1 car, and my grandmother’s wringer washer. Most of us don’t realize how far we have come and there are a few of us on this site that are old enough to remember the 50s, 60s, and 70s and with each of these eras there was the good and the bad but at least people were not glued to their smart devices.
Most people had only one car back then? How many cars did they have back then?
Most families had just 1 car if they had a car. Owning a car was a big thing in the early part of the 20th Century and most people lived in more urban areas where you could walk to the store or take a bus, street car, or train. After WW II was when there was a building boom of more affordable housing with the expansion of suburban areas that had been more rural. The need for a 2nd vehicle became more important once people left urban areas and moved to suburbia. The real expansion of 2nd vehicles for households started in the late 50s and that is a major reason for the introduction of compact cars like the Rambler American and later the Ford Falcon, Mercury Comet, Plymouth Valiant, Dodge Lancer (followed by the Dart), Chevy Corvair, Chevy II, Buick Special, Olds 85, and a series of other compacts. Earlier you could get a VW Bug, Renault Dauphin, Simca, and some British compacts but the Rambler American for the most part started the trend toward the popularity of smaller cars especially since it came out in the Recession of 1958. My parents did not get a second car until 1959 when they moved out into the suburbs. After WW II there was a lot of pent up demand for homes and consumer goods because people went through the Great Depression and WW II not being able to afford or get homes and consumer goods. There were shortages of everything and people had saved up during WW II and wanted homes and goods. Most of us today do not realize how much we have that we take for granted that people in the early part of the 20th Century either wasn’t available or what they could only dream of having which for many was a distant dream. Most of us have a wealthier material life of those in the 50s and 60s but we don’t have the cohesive families that many had. There is always the good and the bad with each decade.
That’s why most standard homes pre WWII have a one-car garage.
One side of my street has homes from the 30s (like mine) with one-car garages. The other side was not developed until the 50s, and it’s mostly big ranch homes with two-cars.
@Corey–Exactly I believe our 2 story house in Dayton, OH in Oakwood was built in the 20s and had a 1 car garage and our first house when we moved to Houston which was either built in the late 40s or early 50s early ranch had a 1 car garage and 1 bathroom even though it was a 3 bedroom house. My parents later bought a new 1 story house more English Tudor style in 1959 in Houston in the suburbs that had a detached 2 car garage with a breezeway, 4 bedrooms, and 2 bathrooms and a half bath along with central air and heat. By the late 50s people buying new homes for the most part wanted a 2 car garage. When we moved to our new home my father bought a used base 57 or 58 Studebaker Scotsman (the cheapest Studebaker you could buy and about the cheapest car on the market) for our second car with 3 on the tree, no radio, no interior or dome light, 1 cardboard visor, 1 windshield wiper, fixed rear side windows, painted metal bumpers and grill, plastic floor, cheap vinyl and cloth seats, and lots of cardboard inside (like the cardboard the dry cleaners folded a shirt in) because plastic was too costly. The Scotsman did have the optional heater. Many people today have no idea what a base car was in the 50s and should be grateful they never experienced a Studebaker Scotsman. That is why I never complain about hard plastics in car interiors after experiencing thin card board door cards and kick panels in a Studebaker Scotsman which was the thriftiest of any car on the market at the time. It did get about 20 mpg with the flathead 6 and 1 barrel carburetor with manual choke but a bicycle would beat it from a dead start. I was just about 7 years old but that car left me with an lasting memory and my father replace it in 1961 with an new 1962 Chevy II 300 with a 194 I6. The Chevy was like a luxury car and it was a hot rod in comparison. My brothers and I drove the Chevy II in high school and I drove it when I first started college. I had some good memories growing up in the 50s and 60s but not everything was great.
1953 here, one car (and it’s a tiny spot by today’s standards, and would have never fit some of the land yachts on the market in 1953). But then again my house is on a raised lot on a hillside and the topography would have made any more garage space almost impossible.
Jeff, brought back some memories! (I’m 75)
I am 70, my middle brother is 76, and my older brother died in early 2021 at 77. My little sister the late life baby will be 56 in August. Both my parents are dead.
As a child we were a 2 vehicle family. We had a car and a pickup. the pickup was primarily the support vehicle for my dad’s small trucking company. The car was the family vehicle.
I am aware of most of this, but in your earlier post you referred to “most people” rather than “most households”, and even after the move to suburbia in the 1950s and ’60s some of us didn’t live with both parents, and those like myself certainly didn’t have a cohesive family.
I am aware of most of this, but in your earlier post you referred to “most people” rather than “most households”, and even after the move to suburbia in the 1950s and ’60s some of us didn’t live with both parents, and those like myself certainly didn’t have a cohesive family.
I’m so old that I remember having to get up, walk over to the TV and manually change the channel. Talk about hardship.
Growing up in Toronto we received signals from 6 TV stations. CBC, CTV, CHCH (an independent in Hamilton), and the NBC, CBS and ABC signals from Buffalo.
In the late 1980’s in the UK they still received less than a half dozen stations.
But back then when you bought an appliance you expected it to last. Yes it might need repairs but getting 25+ years from a fridge and 30+ years from a stove was expected. TV’s were more problematic. But how many TV repair shops still exist? Or appliance repairs? Our TV repair person taught that subject at the local college. That course/program was cancelled decades ago. Now throw out and replace. So much for ‘ecology’.
I used to change the oil on our early 1980’s Hondas a minimum of 4 times per year. And lubed/greased all the ‘fittings’ and changed the air cleaner at the same time. Simple and quick to do. They may have been the last vehicles that I owned that required regular ‘lube jobs’.
Our Zenith color TV with large wood cabinet was not especially reliable growing up. Went through enough tubes to put my parents off Zenith permanently. Their next TV was a Panasonic.
True but the tubes were cheap and easy to replace and there was a tube tester with new tubes at your nearby Seven Eleven. Still managed with a few tube replacements to get almost 20 years out of the old RCA black and white wood cabinet console tv before the picture tube started to go which was replaced by our first color tv in the early 70s a Zenith wood cabinet console tv. My eyes had to adjust to the bright color hues of that Zenith. My father was a very thrifty man and tried to squeeze a nickle out of every penny. I have a lot of humorous memories of my father’s thriftiness and my mother’s frustrations with it.
@Arthur–The remote control somewhat has contributed to obesity in our modern day society. Just gave away a trouble free 27 year old base Roper refrigerator that was in my garage. I have an almost 7 year old Kenmore Elite side by side that I have had to replace cracked door shelves and the ice maker and water dispenser are not working. The issue was broken wires in the door and I had to order a new stainless steel door because the wiring is built into the door at a cost of 1k which I ordered in early March and still waiting. I wished I would have just paid a little extra and bought a new refrigerator. Don’t buy a refrigerator with the ice maker built into the door (better the ice maker is built into the freezer) and one with the water and ice dispenser in the door. My parents had an old black and white RCA console TV that almost made it to 20 years. My last vehicle requiring a lube job was my 99 S-10 which was one of the most reliable vehicles I have ever owned.
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