Macon Magazine

108 l MACON MAGAZINE JUNE/JULY 2013 MEN & CARS | by james barfield We Americans love our cars, and a large and growing number of us love the cars of yesteryear. Internet sites, magazines, car shows and television auctions reflect our fascination with vintage automobiles. While other objects must have been around for a century to qualify as antique, a car receives that designation at a mere 50 years. The car that's the object of this article qualifies at the ripe old age of 56. In 1956 the Ford Motor Company introduced the Continental Mark II, a unique hand-built luxury coupe equipped with every power feature of the day as standard equipment. Only air conditioning was optional. With a price tag of $10,000 the Mark II cost twice as much as a new Cadillac. Among buyers were such notables as Elvis Presley, R.J. Reynolds, Frank Sinatra, Barry Goldwater and the Shah of Iran. Many critics and commentators, then and now, called it the most beautiful car made in America. Contrary to the 1950s trends of lavish applications of chrome, increasingly tall tail fins and two-tone paint schemes, the Mark II was a paragon of taste and restraint, of elegant classic lines. The original Lincoln Continental, introduced in 1939, had been called America's most beautiful car by no less an arbiter of taste than architect Frank Lloyd Wright, who purchased several of them. After World War II the Ford Motor Company stopped making the Continental in 1948. In response to numerous and continued requests Ford began to consider bringing back the Continental as early as 1949. In 1952 they began planning a new edition to be called Mark II. A new and separate division of the company was formed to create the new car. This version was not to be a Lincoln but, rather, a Continental. A stylist named John Reinhart led the team that won the design competition and thus created the look of the new Mark II. In addition to featuring elegant good looks, the Mark II was to be built with meticulous attention to detail. Even its nuts and bolts were to be honed to aircraft quality. Each unit received four coats of Photography by danny gilleland e front end of the Mark II was simplicity itself incorporating a pair of headlamps, a pair of parking or running lights, a tasteful grill to provide air for the engine and a solid bumper of chrome, not plastic, to protect the car. e Continental Star, which would become an enduring symbol for Continental cars, was created in a hurry. Bob omas, a Ford designer, woke up at 6:00 one morning in 1955 realizing that there was no symbol for the new Mark II. He rushed to his drawing board and, by the time of a meeting for executive approval at 10:30, his drawing of the Continental Star was completed and crowning the podium from which the announcement of the new Mark II was to be made.

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