A bright representative of the heyday of the American automobile industry, the Lincoln Premiere, produced for only four years, had a short but stellar life.
Source: Drive2
The 1950s was a well-known era of the heyday of the American automobile industry. A bunch of car brands, model lines, chrome, fins, panoramic windshields, and much more were the distinctive features of these years’ automobiles. Interestingly, Lincoln’s Continental was very well known to everyone, however, its “younger sister”, the Premiere, was not inferior to the luxury brand family in gloss and style. Lincoln’s design division head William M. Schmidtwork was the one to whom the model owed its style. Even though it had a relatively short lifetime on the conveyors, the model’s style and the beauty of the lines can still fascinate.
Source: Barn Finds
One of the 50s most remarkable luxurious vehicles that brought the design of the concept model to the assembly line was very close in spirit to the 1954 Mercury XM-800: they shared common elements in the design, for example, the outstanding “rocket” chrome bumpers and “eyelashes” under which the head optics were located. In general, the car turned out to be futuristic for 1956, but at the same time attractively beautiful, as it collected the best from the Ford Motor Company models of the fin style era. Overall, the vehicle was on the assembly line for only 4 years and was produced between 1956 and 1960. The first model cost $4,600 and was equipped with a 6.0 L Y-Block V8 engine, with a capacity of 285 hp. The first vehicles also got air conditioning and seats that had an incredible number of adjustments. The car (both sedan and convertible) could accommodate 6 passengers. Moreover, the abundance of chrome parts gave it a then popular aviation style. The next two years were marked by second-generation Premiers produced from 1958-1960. These were incredible supercars, the longest ones ever produced in the world. The manufacturer tried to combine the modern achievements and vintage traditions of Lincoln, this time introducing vehicles that resembled a narrow-eyed monster. Weighing 2.2 tons and driven by a 7-liter MEL V8 engine they became a business card of the era. Over 4 years of production, 101 484 vehicles of the luxury class model were assembled.
Source: Fine Art America
The Premiere of the 1958 release turned out to be very impressive in dimensions. Designers Elwood Engel and John Najjar had gone too far in their “more is better” approach, turning this 1958 model into a stylistic nightmare. All models of that year received sharp chrome-tipped inverted fins, concave wheel arches, and tilted twin headlights, for which they were nicknamed “cross-eyed monsters”. Partly because of this, and partly because of the recession of 1958, Lincoln’s sales plummeted, and the company lost over $60 million in three years. From 1958-1960 the Lincoln Premiere was available in three body styles: 2-door hardtop, 4-door Landau hardtop, and 4-door sedan. It differed from the prestigious Continental model by a convex panoramic rear window (instead of tilted inward), a radiator grille with horizontal bars (instead of a caged one), triangular tail lights (instead of triple round ones), and a chrome side molding. Differences from the base Capri series were less obvious and came down mainly to interior trim. Lincoln Premiere sales hit 10,275 units in 1958, 7851 units in 1959, and 6574 units in 1960. After 1960, Ford abandoned the junior Lincoln models in favor of the next generation Continental, reduced in size.
Source: a2goos
In 1958, Ford’s plant in Wixom, Michigan put into production the largest monocoque cars in history. We are talking about the models Lincoln Capri, Lincoln Premiere, and Continental, built on a common platform with a wheelbase of 131 ”(3327 mm). They measured 5800 mm in length, had a record interior width (1600 mm), and were equipped with the then largest V8 430 engine with a volume of 7044 cm3 and 375 hp with a 3-speed automatic transmission Turbo-Drive as standard.
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