The present post is a slightly modified version of a post I wrote in 2013 for my Art Contrarian blog.
For a couple of decades, we in North America became used to seeing Lincoln automobile grilles that looked like these shown below.
These are Lincoln Town Cars, a model produced for many years. The upper photo is of a 2002 model, the lower shows a Town Car from around 2011. Their shield-like grille shape dates from the 1993 Lincoln Mark VIII, though rectangular grilles with wide chrome frames and thin, vertical bars continued on some models until the 2002 model year.
Changes in grille design rapidly accelerated by 2007 as Lincoln sales continued to dwindle from the 1989-90 peak. 2013 models had faces such as on the MKZ model shown here.
I don't like that grille design. But I do find it interesting how Lincolns stylists raided the marque's historical parts bin, so to speak, in a search for a different theme 1993-2007 and the 20-odd years before that.
Consider the Lincoln Navigator SUV (sport-utility vehicle). The upper photo is of a 2003 model, the lower one shows the 2007 Navigator with a different grille theme. Where might that theme have come from?
Probably from the design Lincolns sported for the 1946-1948 model years. Shown here in a Mecum auction photo is a Lincoln Continental Cabriolet.
Then there is the grille on the 2013 Lincoln MKX crossover SUV. It has been around for a few model years and is similar in spirit to the MKZ shown above except that the grille bars are heavy and are aligned vertically rather than horizontally. And where might this have come from?
Once source was probably this 1995 concept car called the Sentinel. But we can push the idea even farther back to...
...the 1939-1941 model Lincoln Zephyrs and Continentals (above is a 1940 model Lincoln Zephyr, Hyman photo).
In the midst of this stylistic thrashing about, he find the...
...2007 Lincoln MKX (upper) whose grille reminds one of the of the 1964 Lincoln Continental (lower photo via barrett-Jackson.
Where else might Lincoln stylist care to dig for traditionally based grille themes? I suggest these as starters:
The upper (Bonhams auction) image is of a 1942 Lincoln Continental Coupe, the lower shows the grille used on 1949 Lincolns.
1 comment:
As a former '62 owner I noticed some of these, particularly the split grille which never worked no matter the thickness or direction of the grille bars and besides almost no one would know what they were up to. Maybe a pointy prow and curved opening like the beautifully done '30's design would have worked. Somehow they never tried a Mark II style grille including the overall shape which might have actually worked.
Lincoln made a bunch of concept cars obviously based on the '61, but then never used any of those ideas on a production version. I think one might have worked, a lot of people would get the idea, and it would have set them apart from other such cars. Oddly, they did do interiors on two or three models based on the '61 interior but pretty much no one would have known except me.
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