Junkyard Find: 1979 Lincoln Continental Town Car
Malaise Era Lincolns are common sightings in high-turnover pull-yer-part wrecking yards these days, since there’s not much interest in preserving these cars. We saw an extremely clean 1976 Town Car in California a few months back (it’s still on the yard, and very few parts have been pulled since I photographed it), and now I’ve found this rougher (but not at all rusty) ’79 at another San Francisco Bay Area self-serve yard.
Even it its distressed state, the luxury is still evident.
Somebody grabbed the 400, for reasons that probably made sense at the time.
Opera lights? Opera lights.
The Park-To-Reverse fiasco resulted in Ford recalling 23 million vehicles in 1980 and adding these warning stickers.
Super-cushy burgundy leather seats, of course.
85 mph speedometer.
The ornamental trip-counter reset knob is a nice touch.
I have never found one of these Cartier “digital” clocks in working order, but my car-clock collection needs one. I decided to risk $5.99 on this one… and it works! People win the lottery, and 1970s Detroit car clocks sometimes work.
Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.
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My Mom owned a 75 and a 77 Town Car. Both had whatever electrical glitch that made the headlights turn off all the time. We'd be driving around Chicago with no headlights (!). But at least we did so in style... That being said, I still kinda want one; in Collector's Series midnight blue, please.
I've driven one of these and a Mark V, but chickened out on both and didn't buy either one. As I near retirement I think I am going to finally get one. Yep they are a microcosm of the 70's decadence and excess, but damn I think they are beautiful and I want one! Hope the 8-track works!