Junkyard Find, Sajeev's Bitter Tears Edition: Lincoln Town Car Cartier Series
Mr. Mehta, lover of all things Ford (except, apparently, the Lincoln Mark VI), was quite put out by my failure to include the “ Sajeev’s Bitter Tears” tag in the 1980 Mercury Capri Junkyard Find post last week.
Not wanting to put him in a bad mood for the upcoming Houston 24 Hours of LeMons race, I have since retrofitted that post with the appropriate weepiness, and as an added bonus I photographed this amazingly Sajeevian Town Car in a Denver self-service yard.
The Cartier Series was the top Town Car trim level in 1986, making it the pinnacle of the Panther universe in that year.
This one has a digital instrument cluster, padded roof, Cartier emblems on the seats, the works.
For some reason, the front seats are cloth while the rears are leather. My guess is that someone swapped in some cloth LTD seats when the original leather Town Car ones went bad, but perhaps this was a weird factory option. Perhaps Sajeev will enlighten us about the details of the rare Nearly Velour™/Simu-Leather™ interior option for the ’86s.
There’s no danger of confusing the ’86 Town Car with some other Ford product, which couldn’t be said of GM at the time.
The word “quality” is heard many times in this ad. And, hey, today’s Junkyard Find lasted for 29 years!
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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the notepad scrap suggests that it spent some time in the N. Dallas suburb of Plano, TX. A friend in HS had one of these, and the dash always amused teenaged me, watching the numbers climb in small jumps thanks to the 302's roar, and watching the instant MPG drop to zero.
The commercial from 1986 stands out in my memory, from my days in the 8th grade! Watching the "confusion and exchange" between the valet and the GM drivers cemented my ideas of preserving traditional, tasteful design. Errrr, tasteful for the times, I suppose. I always loved the boxy Lincolns...but man oh man, are they a booger-bear to hand wash. Soooo many creases and recesses to catch bug splatter and grime. Then, the crazy towel dance while trying to dry these cars after a wash, whereby water oozes and drips from the multitude of exterior trim pieces minutes after a full dry-off.