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.
Holy grail material right here
Torch, jump in the ocean. Best thing for poison ivy, it will be gone overnight.
No! He might lose his glasses.
Torch, you look so exhausted in the photo! Please take a break to recover!
I worked with a guy who cleared the poison ivy in his yard and burned it in a pile. Had to go to the ER. Came back to work a week or more later looking like he had called Mike Tyson a wuss. Twice. Didn’t even recognize him by his face. Guy was an engineer. Yeah, I didn’t find that surprising, either.
It’s getting more common to find places that rent goats for yard clearing and they eat poison ivy (just about anything, I suppose). I was told by a goat guy that you want the larger ones as the small ones will get sick or something. Plus, goats are funny.
The real question is, how many kittens will you find in it?
Poison Ivy? Solid Faster Pussycat song.
Poison Ivy? Why, she was always nice to me.
I have an ongoing Giant Hogweed problem.
Don’t worry, Torch – getting a nasty case of poison ivy right before heading off to Pebble Beach is the kind of thing you’ll look back and laugh about someday. Or at least, David and the rest of the crew will. 😉
And us, the Readers. We will be laughing, too.
Despite being stuck at our desks in our mundane 9-5 (this week is more 7:30-8:30, and no, not just 1 hr, uuugggghhhh).
On second thought, sure, I’ll take the poison ivy, and the trip to the Sands of the Little Rocks, and all the champagne and caviar I can stuff in my cheeks like a chipmunk.
Your wife bought that old “poison ivy on my junk” line?
Fun fact poison ivy is from the cashew family. The urisea oil causes the itching and rashes so cover up and wash off as soon as you come in contact. Use warm water as hot water irritates and spreads the rash. Call a Dr if rash is on ears, eyes, lips, or gonads. Do so quickly.
Hey you already have a kid so the last part may not include you but i hear the swelling of your sack can be quite impressive.
Urushiol oil. Wash with hot water and dawn detergent as soon after exposure as possible. If you wait until the immune reaction causes the visible rash, you are hosed.
Here’s a good resource:
https://www.fs.usda.gov/t-d/pubs/htmlpubs/htm07672313/index.htm
So is Mark going to be dressed in chauffer livery? Will you call him Jeeves and ask people if they have any Grey Poupon?
Too bad it’s not a convertible; you could roll up to the show blasting Jane’s Addiction’s “Superhero” and recreate the opening credits of Entourage.
I’d go with “Mountain Song”.
It somehow seems more fitting.
Slide in sideways to a tire smoking stop. All the doors open dramatically at the same time.
The smoke from the tires recedes, wafted away by the fanning open of the large yet elegant coach doors of the Lincoln.
The Autopian staff emerge from the car in what appears to be slow motion to any onlookers, but is actually just a state of stunned confusion.
“ Everybody held their own opinion
Everybody held their own opinion”
Monocles drop from wide eyed Pebble Beach regulars and break on the concrete concourse as our heroic crew of motoring motivated morons meander through the crowd.
“ Cash in now, honey
Cash in now
Cash in now, baby
Cash in now, honey”
The crowd parts to let them through like Moses through the Red Sea.
Everybody’s eyes are on them with what looks like an expression of respect and understanding.
Maybe, just maybe a hint of fear.
“Oh-oh-oh, oh-oh”
Finally! They are recognized by their automotive enthusiast peers for what they are…
a wide eyed, ragtag, bunch of weirdos, covered in rashes and itching themselves too much.
There’s more than one way to part a crowd. You don’t have to be rich and famous to pull it off.
This may be the very first 1 of 80 cars in the world to be graced by the presence of a slurpee cup.
I’ve always been curious: What’s the rear exterior door handle situation like? Having moved the handle from its normal aft position to the front of the door, I wonder if that panel was a custom low-volume job, or if they were able to just flip the panel side-to-side and use them that way. What’s the fit and finish of the rear-opening door mechanism like?
If this generation Continental had
suicidecoach doors from the the very beginning, I think they would have sold a lot more. Therein lies the gimmicky-throwback that would have made this car stand out from the competition. Otherwise, it was a competent but not compelling choice. Unfortunately, Ford realized this too late and by the time they introduced the feature, the car was outdated and no one cared.Hell, they even used a couple of these coach-door Continentals in Succession.
How are the “coach doors” in practice? Does it feel more convenient or comfortable with the hinge behind you? Or is it more of a gimmick? Does the existence of the B-pillar put a damper on them at all?
I like the idea, but I feel like if the arrangement truly were better, it would have been adopted on a wide scale by now, so I’m curious.
I am expecting Three Stooges style comical occurrences of Beau and Jason and Matt and David bumping into each other coming out of the car at the same time, since the rear coach doors funnel passengers towards the exiting front passengers.
I’m gonna knock on every piece of wood in my office before saying the next question.
Does anyone else here think they are one of the few people immune to poison ivy?
I’ve never had it, but I remember playing as a kid with two others in some overgrown area. I was certainly in the same exact places as them and both of them got murdered by poison ivy but I had…nothing
There are other examples of playing in places where there for sure was poison ivy, since we know how to spot it. But I still didn’t have any reaction.
I’m 100% sure I still jinxed myself…..this was dumb haha
I was convinced that I was immune too, right up until about 2012 when I got it 3 times in the same summer. Bad too. Like, really bad. It was absolutely miserable.
…yeah… with my luck recently, I’ll probably have a similar trajectory as you. 3 times? yikes.
I’ve known people who are immune. I learned one of my friends was immune after we were bushwhacking on a hike and she led us right though a bunch of poison oak (same nasty irritant, different leaf shape). Having had several bad poison ivy encounters previously, I had a very strong reaction.
Since then, even if I’m just in the vicinity of poison oak with no actual contact, I can feel a mild reaction starting. Not sure if it is the oils blowing in the wind, or psychosomatic, but popping some Benadryl clears up the symptoms.
Actually as you get older you become less susceptible but unfortunately not immune.
I’ve heard of other people say they’ve had some kind of reaction just being near it too, no idea how that works but you might not be alone.
“Murdered by poison ivy.” Do you live in Gotham City?
hahaha
From what I understand, pretty much everyone will get it eventually if they get enough exposure. I also must have been immune as a kid, but ended up getting it in my 20s, though not too bad. Now, I just scrub with Tecnu Extreme if I think I’ve been exposed and I haven’t had a problem since. I believe Dawn dish soap will also do the job, but the Tecnu isn’t expensive and I’d rather know I’m using something that was originally developed to remove radioactive fallout. Also, I’ve heard it can work to relieve poison ivy once it’s taken hold, though I cannot say myself.
That’s my understanding, on the west coast, in those coastal hills, there’s no poison ivy, but there is plenty of poison oak, which also has urisol. I did a lot of camping with the Boy Scouts and never got it, but I was careful then and I’m careful now. I think I’m immune, but I don’t want to find out I’m wrong, as I’ve always heard it wears off with time.
I suspect I am. We had woods behind my house growing up. My Mom and brother got poison ivy from brushing up against it. I did the same lawn mowing up against those plants and never got anything. My Dad never got anything either.
I think your method of “yard work” differs from mine…
But being someone who gets that sort of malady, I can most heartily recommend Prednisone. That seems to be the only thing that clears mine up in a reasonable fashion.
The car is quite nice, btw. I love the idea of a correctly-sized V6 putting out 400/400.
If you get a chance, please see if you can run the rear climate display through a range of numbers just one more time and get pics of each; it will be interesting to see how the display assembles different shapes without having irregular outlines.
Also please tell Monterey I said hello – it’s been twenty years. Have fun!
Am I the one who rebooted at the thought of poison ivy on Torch’s Junk?
The look on Torch’s face is pure gold.
At first, I wanted to proudly proclaim, atop my raggedy soap box, as if it actually mattered, “If Ford built cars like this, Lincoln would still be relevant!”
It was soon after that thought I remembered this iteration of Lincoln Continental had already come and gone, discontinued. And I was sad.
So if there were 150 of the 2020 Coach Builders Edition and they were identical to the 80 of the 2019 80th Edition, only really a 1-80 in the 2019 context.
Amazingly none of the 230 have appeared on BaT… huge potential there to break the internet. Though it’s not a Lincoln SUV, so quite possibly there’s 229 of them still sitting new on dealer lots.
Chrysler 300 guy took a loan and bought one.
The Conti was not some rebadge job. It was CD4-based yes (platform sharing – everyone does it), but was longer, in both wheelbase and overall length, and wider than the Fusion. And then there are the powertrain differences and vastly greater feature availability. Also, it didn’t have fake wood inside.
The S-Class, 7-Series, and LS don’t really platform share, and that’s what a full-size Lincoln is supposed to be going after, not people trading in an old MKZ and maybe looking to move up a bit this time
Those others absolutely platform share. The XF-50 LS is on the TGNA-L platform (Toyota Crown, Mirai, Lexus LC), W223 S-Class is on the MRA 2 platform (C-Class, GLC-Class, E-Class), 7-Series is on the CLAR platform (too many to list).
The Continental wasn’t on the same level as those others – maybe it should have been and Lincoln should’ve tried harder – but my point was the car wasn’t some tarted-up Fusion like RootWyrm said.
That was the MkZ, which looked about the same as the Conti, but smaller because it was a Fusion.
Last year three really cool cars driven by the indomintable three with much merryment by all.
This year, a five year old Ford with the same three travelers.
I liked last year a lot more.
My first thought seeing that picture of Torch in the back seat was “oh no, he looks like he’s going to get the seat dirty in this beautiful and sentimental car”. Then I read that he just finished yard work and had poison ivy on his bare arms touching all over the car and I cried a little inside.
Really nice looking car IMO, excited to see the content from the trip, and maybe a few more pictures of this Lincoln!
drive safe!
Really! I am surprised Beau lets these guys inside of his vehicles. Maybe he needs more trunk space? I thought the Continental always had the mafia approved available trunk space.
The Galpin detailing guy is really going to earn his money next week.
I can’t believe Matt is making you listen to Girl From Ipanema. It just got stuck in my head from writing that. What did you do to piss him off?
Jason has a control panel in the back, so at the very least this is a Stockholm Syndrome thing.
So Torch is ballin’.
Poison ivy ballin’.