We’re Live-Reviewing The Very First 2019 Lincoln Continental With Suicide Doors As We Drive It To Pebble Beach

We’re headed back to Monterey Car Week today and we’re doing it in style: Behind the wheel of a 2019 Lincoln Continental 80th Anniversary Edition. Yes, the one with the suicide doors. Sorry, the one with the coach doors. Matt will be chauffeuring Jason, Beau, and David all the way from Galpin Ford to Pebble Beach and we’ll be giving updates all day from the capacious rear seats.

First, a little context. The car was originally built for Bert Boeckmann, Beau’s amazing dad, who turned Galpin into the successful and beloved company it is today. Bert had a fondness for Lincolns and bought the last Lincoln Town Car to ever roll off the line. When Ford announced it would build just 80 special edition Lincoln Continentals with coach doors for the 80th anniversary of the nameplate, Bert got the first one (literally, there’s a plaque on it that says 1-of-80). Bert passed away earlier this year and so it seemed fitting to take the Continental to Pebble Beach.

Also, this car rules. Here’s how Lincoln described the car in its launch press release:

 “Notice the doors,” the vintage advertisement for the Lincoln Continental began. “And notice how they open. From the center, to make everyone’s entrances graceful.”

With that, an enduring automotive design legend was born – the coach doors – or center-opening doors, which conveyed elegance and a touch of Hollywood glamour.

Today, six decades later, Lincoln is bringing back a modern version of these iconic center-opening doors with the introduction of the Lincoln Continental 80th Anniversary Coach Door Edition. A limited run of just 80 units will be produced.

This particular car features a six-inch stretch and all manner of creature comforts, including “an elegantly crafted pass-through console that offers a stowable tray table with tablet holder and wireless charging pad.” For Matt, who will be driving, there’s the 3.0-liter twin-turbo V6 with 400 horsepower and 400 lb-ft of torque on hand.

There’s a lot more to this car and as we get into it and get driving we’ll send updates along the way.

This Is Already Luxurious For The Driver, Probably Slightly More For The Passenger

There’s Jason, with the alertness that can only come from doing yard work before getting on the plane and realizing your arms are covered with itchy poison ivy blisters. Don’t feel bad for him, he’ll be wafted across the central coast in pure luxury. Actually, don’t feel bad for me either. In addition to the 400 horsepower on top, I’ve got two features I was not expecting:

First up, there’s a push button transmission. While this is not, historically, my favorite transmission choice (in order: floor-shifted manual, column shifted manual, column shifted automatic, everything else), it’s a fun touch. Also, this thing has freaking CarPlay, which I was admittedly not expecting.

We’ll be leaving… soon. Jason and I are on East Coast hours and Beau and David are not. Let’s leave it at that – MH.

We haven’t even left the parking lot and Matt is already on my ass about adding to the blog. I don’t feel like it, because I always knew the lie of “doing homework on the way” and all that crap. But fine. Also, as Matt mentioned, I was an idiot and got horrible poison ivy all over my arms and hands and a bit on my lower back and, most distressingly, on my junk. It’s terrible. But, as Matt noted, I’m in a very luxurious car being swiftly shuttled to the Bestest Car Showery On Earth, so I really don’t get to complain.

The setup is pretty great back here: 120V outlet to provide a nice flow of electrons which I’ll transform into silly words, just for you. Plus, there’s this seat massager that feels like a bunch of billiard balls running up my back and persistently trying to force its way into my buttocks, which, if I get bored, I just might allow.

This poison ivy, though, it’s terrible. When I’m King Emperor of Earth you’re all invited to the ceremony where I launch the last poison ivy seeds into the sun after my crack team of botanists eradicate it from the planet. Oh and also, have you ever had bad poison ivy and run it under really really hot water and it kind of overloads your brain’s sensory system and it puts you into this strange otherworldly state beyond pain and into something that isn’t exactly pleasure, but isn’t exactly not? That was my shower this morning.

Anyway, back to the Lincoln; first off, if you’re expecting a really rational, unbiased review because you’re in the market for one of these 80 cars that are all pretty much unavailable, I’m sorry, this won’t be that. We’re not going to be really objective here! Come on. I can show you some details that I think are interesting though, like this:

This little display on the rear seat climate system. I love these sorts of alphanumeric displays! They’re not dot-matrix displays, they’re a multi-segment kind of display, but look how many segments there are there! There has to be like 70, 80 segments there? These remind me of the sorts of displays you see on train station information/schedule boards.The look of the characters are great, and they have this kind of shimmery, silvery quality. It’s hard not to play with this and watch the numbers change, but that’s going to annoy everyone pretty soon.

Anyway, I’m gonna let these billiard balls do their thing now.

– JT

So, a quick update. Look what we saw! A Hongqi CA7460! What are the odds of that? Essentially zero, and yet here we are. We’ll have more on this amazing thing soon.

– JT

Hey! Look at this lovely thing we saw alongside us!

A Citroën SM! Sure, it has the less-cool US-market headlights, but it’s still incredible and ethereal and lovely. And the owner is just driving it up from LA; we know this because David just saw this same car in Studio City the other day.