From Ford Motor Company’s perspective, the greatest satisfaction of the Lincoln “Mark” cars of the seventies lay in their regularly out-selling arch-rival Cadillac’s comparable models. Car enthusiasts, however, simply remember the cars as the defining American luxury vehicle of the day. The Continental was even immortalized in the seventies movie classic, “The French Connection,” where a Mark I car was the well-heeled French villain’s choice for smuggling cocaine into the country. There was just something about this car’s long-hood, short-deck, sharp-edged styling, luxury appointments, and classic grille that communicated: “First Class.”
