SWAN SONG
After 103 years, Lincoln is getting out of the business of making sleek, stylish sedans to concentrate on building the elephantine SUVs that everyone wants now.
That’s sad news for car enthusiasts, but at least the brand is exiting the way it entered: with a high-end, coach-built special. Ask any automotive history buff which American automaker offered the most custom body designs in its catalog, and they’ll likely be surprised to learn it was Lincoln.
We have Henry Ford’s son, Edsel, to thank for that. Immediately upon being placed in charge of Ford’s newly acquired Lincoln brand in 1922, Edsel set about enlisting the top custom coachbuilders in the U.S. to design bodywork for the brand’s technically brilliant Model L chassis.
Over the years, Lincoln worked with nearly all the big houses: Brunn, Derham,
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