1979 Lincoln Continental Base Hardtop 2-door 6.6l on 2040-cars

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Lincoln Continental brings back suicide doors with Coach Door Edition

Remember that teaser image from last week indicating the Lincoln Continental would get suicide doors? Well, it's happening, and we got to check out a prototype late last week. As you can see from the photos, the vehicle is essentially a stretched Continental with rear doors that latch forward. Lincoln doesn't call it the suicide door edition, of course. No, the proper name is 80th Anniversary Coach Door Edition. Semantics aside, the car is here to pay homage to the suicide doors of the 1960s Continental and celebrate 80 years since the original Continental was introduced. That's the why; now here is the how. To build this special edition, a Continental begins life as a normal Black Label model, and leaves the factory with normal doors intact. From there, Lincoln ships the car to Cabot Coach Builders in Massachusetts for the stretch and other modifications we'll get into later. Before you start cursing Lincoln for not really screwing together a suicide door Continental, know this: Lincoln engineered all the components, metalwork and everything else that goes with the build. It then gives the car and components to Cabot for the fabrication work. So yes, somebody else is doing the conversion, but you're still getting a Lincoln-engineered vehicle. Make of that what you will. Cabot has done work for Ford before with the MKT and Transit Van, but Lincoln says it's much more involved in this build than it ever was before. To begin, the Continental gets a six-inch stretch. It was a relatively long car before, but boy does this thing look like it's lounging now. That's exactly what you'll be doing once inside those suicide doors. Lincoln claims best-in-class legroom, and yes, to our eye that is surely accurate. Someone well over 6 feet tall could easily stretch all the way out and still have room to spare back there. The only problem we noticed? Headroom. A sloping roofline combined with seats that are well pushed back doesn't leave a whole lot of space up there. It looks like Lincoln noticed this and carved out little spaces in the headliner, but it might not be enough for those who are closer to the sky than most. A flow-through center console occupies space where the middle seat would typically be. This has all sorts of controls for things like audio and climate control. Lincoln said the one we sat in wasn't entirely finished with all the features and electronics that will be included.

How the Lincoln Continental Concept almost wasn't

That Lincoln Continental Concept that everyone is so excited about? It almost didn't happen. Speaking at the private reveal event for the concept yesterday, Ford Motor Company CEO Mark Fields revealed that when the design team started working on the vehicle that eventually became the Continental, the designers thought it was just another full-size luxury concept, and were turning in ideas to match. The problem, Fields said, is that this was an important vehicle to get right. "A full-size luxury sedan for a luxury brand is a very important marker that, I think, sets the beat for the brand and it creates a lot of awareness and favorability if you do it right," he said. "As we were designing this concept ... we reviewed with the designers the themes. The first couple of themes the team came with really didn't do it for us because we want to make sure that every vehicle that we bring out with Lincoln moves the brand forwards in a big way. So we went through the first couple of them and we really didn't get that kind of 'oomph' in the pit of our stomach." The team was stuck with an upcoming debut and nothing exciting to show for it, until the past was brought into the present. "In one of the design reviews, we were looking around at everyone and we mentioned, you know what, why don't we call this the Continental Concept? And I have to tell you, the body language was unbelievable in the design showroom. Everybody's head snapped up and you could see everybody's eyes widen and they started nodding and they said, 'now we get it.'" Aside from the Navigator, every vehicle Lincoln currently sells is simply named a trio of letters that start with M and K. Fields knew that the large luxury segment sedan is important for a company like Lincoln, with about 1.8 million units sold last year and an expected growth to around 2 million units by the end of the decade, he said. "When you think about where that growth is coming from, it's still a substantial segment here in the US, it's a very substantial segment and even more substantial segment in China. As a matter of fact, that segment grew by 17 percent last year and China is the largest market for full-size luxury sedans." Given the positive reaction to the Continental Concept thus far, bringing the name back from the dead might be just the thing Lincoln needed.

Is Lincoln working on a Continental concept?

The Lincoln Continental wasn't included in our post on the list of trademarks we'd like to see turned into production vehicles – the only Lincoln mention was our idea of transferring its Aviator name to a special edition Ford Mustang. But, like you, the idea of a resurrected Continental is always with us, especially when we read articles about the brand's efforts to redefine American luxury. Ford applied for the Continental trademark in 1953 and renewed in 2005, and it appears they might have something to show for it soon. A web snooper found a development site at the Lincoln domain that introduces us to the "elegantly styled and boldly distinctive Lincoln Continental Concept." There are no images, but we've combined all the text into a single image, above, and the hints we get in three blurb texts inform us that "It represents who we are as a carmaker," that it's an "envisioning of what's to come," that "No question went unanswered" and "No answer went unchallenged," and that it "is everything we know about cars, and everything we understand about people." We also found the tagline "Follow us forward," which doesn't appear on any published Lincoln site page at the moment, and the public is invited to get involved (eventually) by tweeting Continental stories and photos. Could this be the next step in the turgid drama Lincoln Rising? We look forward to finding out. Related Video: