1957 Lincoln Premiere Convertible

On a recent visit to the Automobile Driving Museum for an event hosted by The Racing History Project hosted by Doug Stokes, the author spied a beautiful 1957 Lincoln Premiere convertible on display.

The Lincoln Premiere nameplate was added to the Lincoln Motor Division of Ford Motor Company lineup in 1956 as a mid-level model, positioned below the hand-built Continental Mark II and above the Capri.  The Premiere was available in four body styles- the Landau four-door hardtop, the concealed pillar four-door sedan, the two-door coupe, and the convertible. All but the convertible body style was available with factory air conditioning, a ground-breaking system with a trunk mounted condenser and blower with a pair of clear overhead ducts in the passenger cabin.

Lincolns featured an elaborate paint system: a dip in a chrome-phosphoric acid followed by two coats of primer which was hand sanded before two coats on enamel paint, then baked in a temperature-controlled oven to create a gleaming finish “built to live and last outdoors.”   Although our feature car is finished in Presidential Black super enamel paint, the exterior color palate for the mid-century Lincolns was typical of the era with two shades of pink -Flamingo or Bermuda Coral, Taos Turquoise, a pastel Summit Green and in 1956 a purple color known as Wisteria.

The 1956 and the 1957 Lincoln Premiere offerings can be immediately distinguished as the 1957 model features stacked Quadra-lite grille with four headlights and integrated road lights. Out back the 1957 features exaggerated tail fins which Lincoln literature referred to as “canted rear blades with massive taillights” and large integrated “double width powerful backup lights” in the bumper and hidden exhausts. Lincoln claimed that this all added up to “long low beautiful body lines that meet and merge in a clean sweep of steel.” 

    

The 1957 Lincoln Premiere line featured a choice of four styles of interior – “buttons and biscuits,” rollover pleats, pleated headrests, and the tri-tone “pleated buckets” which added a sports car note.” Our featured car has the pleated buckets in flamingo, black and white. Safety features in the interior include padded sun visors, safety door locks, a double wide ball-bearing mounted rear view mirror, remote outside left side mirror, nylon safety belts and a foam-padded instrument panel.

The 1957 Lincoln Premiere is powered by a 368-cubic inch Y-block V-8 that reportedly developed 300 horsepower linked a tree-speed automatic transmission. However, mounted in a chassis with a 125-inch wheelbase and nearly 19 feet long with a curb weight of 4800 pounds, the Premiere was not a performance car, with 0-60 time estimated at nine seconds with a top speed of 117 miles per hour.

The Lincoln Motor Division sold over 41,000 vehicles in the 1957 model year, and Premiere was a big part with over 35,000 cars sold, and 3676 1957 Premieres were convertibles, which dwarfed the Continental Mark II which sold only 444 of the hand-built machines. 

A 1957 Lincoln Premiere convertible appears in the third Elvis Presley movie, as Elvis’ character "Vince Everett" bought a white convertible with his first royalty check. Elvis owned a 1956 Premiere convertible for a few weeks before he traded it in on a Continental Mark II.

The 1957 body style was replaced for 1958 with the third generation Premiere - a massive unibody design that featured canted quad headlights and was over 19 feet long. The Lincoln line continued to be offered in three price ranges - the Continental, Premiere and Capri – but the design was poorly received by the buying public and between 1958 and 1960, the Lincoln Division reportedly lost $60 million.


For 1961, the Capri and Premiere nameplates were dropped, and the redesigned fourth-generation 1961 Lincoln was sold only as the Continental as either a four-door sedan of four-door convertible. In our next car feature, we'll look back at an earlier 4-door convertible - a 1949 Frazer Manhattan, also in the ADM collection.

Photos by the author   

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deTomaso Pantera by Ghia

 imported by Lincoln-Mercury

 

In September 1969 Ford Motor Company signed an agreement with Italian auto manufacturer Alejandro deTomaso to build a high-volume wedge shaped mid-engine budget supercar, the Pantera (panther in Italian) for the United States market.

Ford knew there would be a limited window of sales for this car as the Tom Tjaarda design would not meet 1975 United States crash standards, but Ford anticipated selling 5000 Panteras a year in the United States at $10,925.00 each through Lincoln-Mercury dealers. At that time a Ferrari sold for $25,000, so Ford was selling a supercar at a bargain price.  

The first Pantera, a yellow car shown at the 1970 Los Angeles Auto Show was actually a European market car with push button doors and was later photographed for the initial Pantera brochures. The Pantera was powered by a Ford 351 cubic inch V-8 fitted with a four barrel carburetor that produced 310 horsepower.

 

click to enlarge

 

The mid-mounted engine fed the power to the independently suspended rear end through a ZF five-speed transmission. With a curb weight of 3123 pounds the Pantera accelerated from a standing start to 60 miles per hour (MPH) in 5.5 seconds and covered the quarter mile in 14 seconds.
 

The Pantera was a hand-built Italian supercar with four wheel power disc brakes and four-wheel independent suspension and cast magnesium  wheels  but being hand built, the cars had some problems. The author recalls making a trip with his father in 1971 as a thirteen year old to a Lincoln-Mercury dealer in Fort Wayne Indiana to look at a Pantera.
 

Upon arrival, the dealer’s salesman was unfamiliar with the car and had no brochures. The dealership’s single medium blue example was not on the showroom floor, but rather was in the service department. The salesman admitted the car wouldn’t run and was in the shop to diagnosis an apparent electrical problem.

My father and I were left alone to wander back into the empty dealership service area to look at the car and were shocked at the poor build quality in the interior and exterior panel fitment. Panteras were notoriously unreliable, with engine cooling issues as well as an inadequate cockpit ventilation system. My father bought a Lincoln Mark III instead (as if he was going to buy anything else).   

Several celebrities owned Panteras. Elvis Presley bought a yellow Pantera for one of his girlfriends, and when it wouldn’t start the enraged star shot the steering wheel, after which the car reportedly started. Playboy Enterprises bought a white 1972 Pantera, had it stripped and painted pink and gave the car to 1972 Playmate of the year Liv Lindeland. In 1974 Canadian hockey star and restaurateur Tim Horton died after he crashed his 1972 white Pantera at over 110 MPH and  was ejected. A later investigation revealed that Horton's blood alcohol was twice the legal limit.   

 

 

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The early Panteras were equipped with attractive thin chrome bumperettes, but by 1973 to meet the new US crash standards, the Pantera Lusso (“L”)  as the example seen at the “Autos of Alamo” car show was equipped with energy-absorbing reinforced steel rubber bumpers which were certainly more attractive than some cars’ added safety bumpers.   

 

At the end of the 1974 model year, as planned Lincoln-Mercury dropped the Pantera line with a  documented total of only 5262 cars sold, far short of the planned 5,000 a year. Many of the surviving Panteras have been modified as the one seen at Alamo which has a non-original pant color and  is fitted larger diameter wheels which are similar to the original Campagnolo design in addition to obvious engine upgrades.

 

The 1973 Pantera had a redesigned instrument cluster with optional wood grain – the original Pantera featured a “twin pod” design

 

All photographs by the author