Lincoln has been many things over the years. In its earliest days (under the supervision of dour old Henry M. Leyland) they built stodgy but extraordinarily-well constructed luxury behemoths -- which, along with the likes of Packard, were sort of America's Rolls-Royces.

After Ford acquired the Lincoln, their powerful engines made them the getaway cars of choice in Al Capone's Chicago, and by the beginning of the 1940's Lincoln became one of the epicenters of America's great design, spearheaded by its particularly invested President, Edsel Ford -- Henry's long-suffering son. Edsel (along with Ford designer, Bob Gregorie) created the seminal 1941 Lincoln Continental, a car that remains even today a template for how to meld broad-shouldered American design with restrained European detailing (something sadly lost after Edsel's premature death and the arrival of the chrome-slathered fifties'). A bit of that 'just-right' visual mix returned during the early sixties with the suicide-door Continentals. But after that, Lincoln has been pretty much adrift...Continued