1949 Lincoln Cosmopolitan

The original plan for the new post- World War 2 Lincoln is obscure to me.  What is known is that the proposed 1949 Ford was rejected by Ernest Breech, who Henry Ford II brought in to essentially run the Ford Motor Company.  The design was considered too large for its market segment, so the body tooling was used for the 1949 Mercury and an entry-level Lincoln.

The obscure part is what the original intention for Mercury was.  Apparently, it would share a body with Lincoln, rather than the case from the 1941 models onward where Mercury shared bodies with Ford.

Here is this photo of a model where the design is close to the eventual 1949 Mercury below the belt line, but with a heavy, fastback greenhouse.  Most likely, this dates after Breech ordered that Mercury get what had been the '49 Ford body.  So far, I've found no photos of full-scale clay models of earlier Mercury design proposals from around 1946 or '47.

In this book, Paul Woudenberg suggested that the original intent was for Mercury to have the bustleback version of the large Lincoln body, and Lincoln was to have a fastback version.   Somehow, this strikes me as being a questionable use of resources, given the postwar drift away from fastback acceptance in the marketplace.  Knowledgeable readers are urged to clarify all this.

In the end, only Lincoln got the large body -- in both fastback and notchback varieties.  This class of Lincolns was marketed as Lincoln Cosmopolitan.  And then there was a line of just plain Lincolns.  These were based on what was now the '49 Mercury body.  About 48 percent of '49 Lincolns were Cosmopolitans, but I haven't found what share of Cosmos were fastbacks.  Probably not a large percentage, because the fastback line was dropped for the 1950 model year.

Even though the numbers of '49 Lincolns and Cosmopolitans were almost the same, a glance at Google Images when searching on "1949 Lincoln" suggests that the majority of survivors in good condition are Cosmopolitans, including some fastbacks.  Something to do with prestige and rarity, I suspect: fancy rare cars eventually become more treasured.

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Here is a 1949 Lincoln Cosmopolitan Sport Sedan, the 4-door sedan with a bustle back.

A full-size Lincoln styling model when the basic body shape had been determined.  Trim details were still in flux, though the grille is close to the production version.

This fastback model is interesting.  Just possibly it was made shortly before the one in the previous image.  It has hidden headlights, a feature planned for '49 Lincolns but rejected late in the design process.  Hubcaps show different Lincoln brand identification proposals.  But the grille features thin, vertical bars and has no upper chromed frame: these are features found on 1949 Mercurys.

Side view of a basic, Mercury-body Lincoln that was for sale.  This 1950 model is nearly identical to the 1949s.

A 1949 Lincoln Cosmopolitan 6-Passenger Coupe.  Its profile is the same as the four-door Sport Sedan's, but its door is wider and window shapes differ accordingly.  Photo via Mecum.

Side view of a fastback 1949 Lincoln Cosmopolitan Town Sedan.

Rounding out the Cosmo line was the 6-Passenger Convertible (Barrett-Jackson photo).

More views of the Cosmo Town Sedan.  Like many first-generation postwar designs it had a basic heavy appearance that the fastback styling exaggerated further.

Cosmopolitan Sport Sedan for auction by Barrett-Jackson.  The doors and side windows are same as on the fastback, but the bustle back style reduces visual bulk.  Backlight windows are three-piece affairs due to limitations in technology at the time.

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Continental Mk II Design Competition

The original Lincoln Continental was iconic, beloved, and considered an automobile styling masterpiece by many observers.  Some background on it can be found here (scroll down for discussions of the Edsel Ford prototype and early production generations).  The original design was marketed during the 1939-1941 model years.  A facelift appeared for the short 1942 model year and there was some further facelifting for 1946-1948.  Model year 1949 brought redesigned Lincolns to market, and Ford Motor Company elected to not offer a Continental model.  This bothered some potential buyers who made their views loudly known, so eventually Ford decided to revive the Continental, this time as a separate, very exclusive brand (Wikipedia entry here).

William Clay Ford, youngest grandson of Henry Ford, was placed in charge of the new Continental project.  An initial design by his team was poorly received by company president Henry Ford II and others, so Bill had to come up with Plan B, a design competition.  What happened is described by Michael Lamm & Dave Holls in their authoritative book "A Century of Automotive Style," pp. 146-147:

* * * * *
[William Clay Ford, in charge of the Continental project] asked his staff to suggest names of outside stylists, and the groups invited were: George Walker Assoc., consultant to Ford Motor Co.; [Buzz] Grisinger & [Rhys] Miller, independent designers, previously with Chrysler and Kaiser-Frazer; Vince Gardner, formerly with Cord and Loewy; and Henry [Ford] II's brother-in-law, Walter Buhl Ford, who later merged with Harley Earl Assoc.

The Continental project now became a five-way contest.  The four outside teams would receive $10,000 each for their Mark II designs, chosen or not.  To keep everything fair and consistent, each team had to deliver side- plan- and end-view drawings plus 3/4-front and 3/4-rear perspective sketches.  Rules stipulated that all artwork had to be the same size, same matting, use the same supplied perspective grids and be of the same color.   No sketches could be signed or identified.   Judges -- five executives from Lincoln -- could cast only one vote each and had to pass through the final display area separately so they couldn't talk, nod or read each other's body language.

The final judging took place in Apr. 1953, and the design that ended up winning the competition came from Bill Ford's own Special Products group [the team led by John Reinhart].

* * * * *
One thing to keep in mind is the styling fashion context of the competition and the resulting production car.  The Continental Mk. II appeared for 1956, the same year the Studebaker Golden Hawk and the Chrysler Corporation line began sprouting tail fins.  Elaborate two-tone paint schemes were found on some 1954 Oldsmobiles and three-tones appeared on 1955 Dodges.  Panoramic (wraparound) windshields were found on a few 1953 Oldsmobiles and Cadillacs, then in 1954 all Buicks, Oldsmobiles and Cadillacs had them.  Contrasting all this, the Continental was very conservative, having only a moderately wrapped windshield, a single-color paint job and no tail fins.  So to some degree the Mark II fit more closely to 1952-53 when it was designed than for its actual model year.  On the other hand, even in 1953 its stylists were probably aware of the near-term new concepts and they or management chose to ignore them.

Decent images of the competing designs are hard to find on the Internet, so I had to resort to scanning images from books in my automotive library.  The design renderings are from Automobile Quarterly, Vol. 12, No. 1, 1974, pp. 100-101.  Side drawings are from "Lincoln & Continental: The Postwar Years" by Paul R. Woudenberg (Motorbooks International, 1980), p. 72.  Click on the images to enlarge.

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1940 Lincoln Continental Club Coupe
This is the Real McCoy.  Future Continental designs had to either speak to it or consciously ignore it (at their peril).

1948 Lincoln Continental Club Coupe - RM Southey's photo
The last Lincoln Continental using original bodywork and facelift features from 1942 and 1946.

1956 Continental Mk. II
The result of the competition and later refinement.  Features echoing the original Continental include: a long hood (by the mid-1950s, long trunks were coming into fashion, hoods becoming shorter); somewhat similar passenger greenhouse, including the general shape of aft side windows and the large C-pillar; and the spare tire at the rear (the hump on the trunk lid was atop the actual tire mounted in an angled position beneath it).

I don't think any of the design proposals makes for an appropriate successor to the original Continental.  Some details here and there are not bad, but the overall designs are lacking the right stuff.  A consistent problem has to do with grilles and front ends in general; most of these designs are bland, characterless.  The best of the lot, an opinion I've held for many years, is the second (lower) Grisinger-Miller design.  I don't like its front and the little fins at the rear, but the rest of the design comes closest to the spirit (not the details) of the original.

As can be seen in these side views, the designers had very little flexibility in basic layout of the car.

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1996 Lincoln Sentinel: Non-Running Semi-Retro Concept

Even though it's a "pushmobile" concept car (lacking motor, drivetrain, etc.), Lincoln's 1996 Sentinel is interesting.  Unfortunately, when this post was drafted (early July 2017) there was little information about it on the Internet: examples are here and here.

Some observers regard the Sentinel as having Retro styling -- evoking the classic 1961 Continental.  To a slight degree that is so.  It also echoes a 1988 production model and explores a future grille theme.

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The 1996 Sentinel.

Here is a 2009 Lincoln MKS showing one of several variations of a circa-2010 Lincoln grille theme previewed on the Sentinel.

The Sentinel shown in the car dealership where it spent several years.  It is painted a light gray, but the lighting gives it a warmer color.

The main similarity to the 1961 Continental is the sharp fender line.

Here is a '61 Continental for comparison.

Side view.  As is often the case, concept cars are given wheels that are a little too large.

The Sentinel's passenger compartment greenhouse resembles that of the 1988 Lincoln Continental shown here, and not that of the 1961 Continental.

Side view of a 1961 Continental.  Its main resemblance to the Sentinel from this angle is their simple, uncluttered sides.

High rear view of the Sentinel.

The 1961 Continental's rear design was not adapted for the Sentinel.

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