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If this posting is in response to mine, I was referring to the 1958 Buick Limited convertible... which is an incredibly rare car and I had one years ago. Mine was black with air, so seeing another black one... in Michigan would be a huge coincidence.

As for the car in this new post, it isn't a 1958. Nor is it even a 1959 as stated. The Buick in the pics here is a 1960. Once had one of those too.

Thanks anyway for posting.

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One other point that is on the level of Packard's postwar wire wheels usually being called "Kelsey-Hayes." There was no such thing as a 1958 "Lincoln Continental." This is a statement made everywhere these days but it is a creation of more recent years. In 1958 there were no "Lincoln" convertibles. And there were no "Lincoln Continental" convertibles. This latter term did not creep into the lexicon until 1960 in preparation for the merging of the two names under one name..."Lincoln Continental" in 1961. Just as there was no such thing as a Clipper convertible in 1955-56. In 1958, there was either Lincoln... or there was Continental Mark III. Never the same car. Lincolns had different roofs, different rear windows, different rear styling, different tail lights, different wheel covers, different insignias, different side trim, different grilles and different interiors.

Today, auction companies, publications and the almighty internet continuously refer to these cars as "Lincoln Continental" but there was no such thing in 1958 or 1959. Sales brochures in 1960 started fudging the terminology. And then for 1961 there were no longer two different cars, but all one thing. Unfortunately this is all that folks seem to remember today. 1958 was either Lincoln OR Continental... but not "Lincoln Continental"... and if the concours signs said "Lincoln Continental" they were simply mistaken.

Thanks for the clarifications, was a bit careless with the Buick and always happy to learn new things about the industry.

Found it interesting that the 1958 brochures referred to the lower priced cars as "1958 Lincoln" while "Continental Mark III" had no model year affixed to it, recalling the industry's series naming convention of yore and suggestive of a more timeless, lasting product. For 1959 the name changed to "Mark IV Continental" switching the placement of the words. The differences between all these mostly look-alike cars was in interior and exterior trim and backlight, except the convertible which as you said only Continental offered. One roof stamping was used for all 58-59 cars while the lower priced cars got a new roof shape for 1960 that migrated towards the 61 shape and aligned with FoMoCo design practice of the day. IMHO the real Continental Mark III for 1958 was masked by Ford styling front and rear and given the name Thunderbird.

You really seem to like these cars! One can see why.

Yes, I know Continental was officially considered a separate car in 58-59 by the company and was talked about as such in the brochures. Whether the buying public fully bought into it all was another matter, the differentiation between the cars being no more than what Cadillac employed to separate its series.

The Continental Division was shut down before the Mark II ended production in the latter half of 1957, so the 1958-60 timeframe was really about gracefully managing a humbling transition to one Lincoln Continental.

I do have to wonder whether Ford (the company) might have been better off carrying over the 57 Lincoln into 58 as had been planned 3 years earlier before 4-pass T-Bird, Wixom and unibody Lincoln materialized in early 56. As such they could have launched the Wixom-built Continental Mark III for 58 as a stand-alone vehicle line that again shared very little with Lincoln, mostly just its powertrain. The 4-door models could have been made available in both regular and slanted roll-down backlight styles. In turn, 1959 would have been Lincoln's new style, now based on the Mercury Park Lane. I always thought Lincoln of these years would have looked great using 60 Park Lane's sheetmetal.

Here's a Mark IV mod that cleans up the sides. This and the quad lights not being canted would have made for a glorious series imho.

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Incredible color on that 1938 Packard V12 convertible!!! Just wow!

"By the way, the Continentals Mark III, IV and V of 1958-60 had roofs, backlight rear windows and windshields that imitated the 1956 Packard Predictor."

The parallels and interconnections between the two companies as it pertains to Predictor, the '57 Packard Program and the '58 L/C III's are fascinating, Bill Schmidt leaving Ford for Packard in late 1954, John Reinhardt having traveled in the opposite direction only a few years earlier. We'll probably never know if and where imitation occurred and by which address.

What fascinates me most is the complete break with existing product that all these designs represented, the biggest shocker being the Continental because the Mark II was explicitly designed to be not only be optimally proportioned but flowing and sensuous. To replace it with a four square design made no sense, nor was calling the '59 a Mark IV and the '60 a Mark V when convention dictated continued use of Mark III until the next major redesign.

I am left to wonder what would have become of Mark III had the design team cribbed Packard and Edsel and adopted a traditional vertical grill. Together with Predictor's hidden lamps I think it might have saved the car. Here's a work-up that widens Edsel a few inches, hides the lamps like Predictor and fills in the Edsel's grill surround with a mesh. While its shape would have needed to be different than Edsel, perhaps a bit more squared, and the bumpers more delicate and expensive looking, the basic arrangement of frontal elements seem sound and much more compelling than the lackluster design they went with.

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On the Lincoln and Continental name usage question: After the failure of the Continental Mark II, Lincoln-Mercury Division learned to differentiate the Continental idea into (1) a specific styling theme, (2) a marketing device:

(1) The first was defined as a long hood/short deck/close-coupled personal luxury coupe or cabriolet with externally-mounted spare or a representation thereof. "Continental" had named this configuration, first as the 1940-'48 "Lincoln Continental", then as the 1956-'57 "Continental Mark II". Prior its 1958 application, this is what 'Continental' identified.

(2) The second 'Continental' simply designated the finest, top-of-the-line, most fully-power-equipped, quality-crafted, stylish luxury car, not a specific proportional configuration. Taking a page from English automaker playbook, the appending of "Mark" with a Roman Numeral after designated a successor series, plus a further touch of class. If ever there was a marketing concept to exploit to the maximum, Detroit never shied away from doing so.

Applying the "Continental Mark" designation to each of the 1958 through 1960 top-line models was nothing more than another tool to enforce the latter concept with reference to the former, however seemingly inappropriate. Plainly, the public could see the 1958 Continental Mark III was not in the vein of the prior Continentals. Prior Continentals had been far more than grilles, taillights and trim changes, a reverse-angle retractable rear window applied to a production Lincoln platform.

With the emerging personal luxury coupe segment during the mid-late 1960's, Lincoln-Mercury marketing chose to ignore the prior inappropriate application of "Mark" to cars whose proportions did not conform to the original configuration named by that designation. "Continental" by then had simply come to definite their finest luxury car whether sedan, coupe or convertible.

Seconding Paul's idea, Lincoln should have continued the '56-'57 body into '58, then continued with BoF construction sharing platform with the '59-'60 Mercury Park Lane. A unique long hood/short deck Continental Mark coupe on the Thunderbird platform would have reentered the market in the early 1960's.

Steve

Nicely framed up, Steve. Also, am glad Leeedy put a spotlight on Mark III in the first place. There was something very special going on in the American car industry in the 1950's that we haven't seen for a long long time. The Big 3 and Packard were making a concerted effort to achieve a level of excellence on par with the classic era. What I wonder about was why the efforts ultimately came up short relative to Mercedes-Benz, which went on to surpass the Americans by the 1980s. What did the Americans get right and wrong? Was body or platform sharing with lesser cars necessary given that M-B S-Class became a stand-alone product that paid its own bills?

Besides needing better front styling that represented a lasting signature element commanding respect and admiration, should the 1958 Continental Mark III have leveraged its unibody more fully by incorporating an independent rear suspension, to re-balance the ride & handling equation typical of American cars, and to increase trunk volume? Should it have dispensed with the 4-door hardtop body style and used the B-pillar on the sedan not simply as a post but as a key element of structural rigidity, to take weight out of the underbody? Should Mark II's quality control processes have been carried over, at least during Wixom's inaugural shake-down year? Could all this have allowed a stand-alone Mark III with some T-Bird but no Lincoln sharing, priced 10% above 60 Special, to break even at 5000 units a year and turn a handsome profit at 10,000 units? Could sales have included a real effort at exporting to achieve global presence? Should Edsel have been assembled in Wixom too, built on T-Bird's narrower unibody chassis and priced similar to T-Bird, inclusive of independent rear suspension, and sold alongside Mark III through a new Edsel-Continental sales channel?

Questions of body style, appearance, technology, content, manufacturing strategy, sharing, pricing, volumes, dealer strategy, global scale and profitability have always confronted car makers and continue to do so today.