- Joined
- Jul 21, 2012
- Messages
- 3,240
- Reaction score
- 16
- Location
- South Florida
- My Car
- '71 Mustang Mach 1 M-code "Soylent Green"
'69 Plymouth Valiant 100
'68 Plymouth Satellite
Pulled the trunk carpet on the '78 Lincoln Continental Mark V today after going on a cleaning-fest in the trunks of all the cars. Carpet felt loose, so I figured I'd have a look at it (for the very first time).
Not that I shouldn't have expected to find this - seeing that the car is rough to begin with - but seeing it for the first time on a car that you've known all your life does give one a shock:
Reminds me of our trunk floors, only a lot fatter and installed backwards. Note the galvanized U-shaped steel member that sits above the actual frame of the car, and serves as a mounting point between the body and frame. Almost like a mini-unibody framerail for the body tub.
No chance in hell for me to fix this one. I do not hold the smogger Continentals and Marks in high regard - in addition to the bad mileage and performance due to the early EPA regs, Ford tried to take their cheap-car engineering knowledge and build all the luxury doo-dads out of plastics and chicken wire. Notice that the trunk mat has cardboard "floors" over each of the quarter panel dropoffs in an effort to create the illusion of a flat floor. That's right - cardboard trunk floor extensions in Ford's top-of-the-line 2-door luxury car. It's an oversized, underbuilt, smogged-up, body-on-frame Mustang, and that's not saying much for it.
They were junk when new, junk when old, and this particular Mark V is past it. Springs in the back are shot, LH fender is a rotted replacement from a '77, rear window area is rotted through (and it's a vinyl-delete car with all of one option - the RH mirror. I'm willing to bet it's a 1-of-1 slicktop in Chamois Metallic too), and the entire front of the frame is bent over 3/4" to the left from a truck that cut in front of it. Oh, and the old 400 (with a screamin' 7.9:1 compression ratio) has a phantom ping in it, thanks to those lousy heads. Used to be much worse due to the usual EGR funkiness, and - rather than recurve - I dumped a cheap eBay-find Edelbrock Performer 400 on it with a 600cfm Holley 4160. It helps, if you like dumping fuel into a Cleveland-based engine that's been reverse-engineered into an unusable piece of scrap iron to satisfy the government.
The thing has been in the family since 1984. I think it's finally time to disown the piece of crap - but it stays for one reason: Given the opportunity, Dad would probably build a shrine to the styling of this thing, and its designer, Don DeLaRossa (who carried the Mark V's design with him to Chrysler, where he applied it to the 1980 Cordoba and Imperial).
Not a day will go by without some comment about the perfection of the Mark V's lines. If he only knew this same fellow had helmed the Mustang II styling team a few years earlier...
If there is anything to sum this up: Be glad that our Mustangs don't have glued-down trunkmats - they attract moisture like flies to a garbage heap. The floorpans on this car are perfect, by comparison (and probably the only perfect thing this car will ever have).
-Kurt
Not that I shouldn't have expected to find this - seeing that the car is rough to begin with - but seeing it for the first time on a car that you've known all your life does give one a shock:
Reminds me of our trunk floors, only a lot fatter and installed backwards. Note the galvanized U-shaped steel member that sits above the actual frame of the car, and serves as a mounting point between the body and frame. Almost like a mini-unibody framerail for the body tub.
No chance in hell for me to fix this one. I do not hold the smogger Continentals and Marks in high regard - in addition to the bad mileage and performance due to the early EPA regs, Ford tried to take their cheap-car engineering knowledge and build all the luxury doo-dads out of plastics and chicken wire. Notice that the trunk mat has cardboard "floors" over each of the quarter panel dropoffs in an effort to create the illusion of a flat floor. That's right - cardboard trunk floor extensions in Ford's top-of-the-line 2-door luxury car. It's an oversized, underbuilt, smogged-up, body-on-frame Mustang, and that's not saying much for it.
They were junk when new, junk when old, and this particular Mark V is past it. Springs in the back are shot, LH fender is a rotted replacement from a '77, rear window area is rotted through (and it's a vinyl-delete car with all of one option - the RH mirror. I'm willing to bet it's a 1-of-1 slicktop in Chamois Metallic too), and the entire front of the frame is bent over 3/4" to the left from a truck that cut in front of it. Oh, and the old 400 (with a screamin' 7.9:1 compression ratio) has a phantom ping in it, thanks to those lousy heads. Used to be much worse due to the usual EGR funkiness, and - rather than recurve - I dumped a cheap eBay-find Edelbrock Performer 400 on it with a 600cfm Holley 4160. It helps, if you like dumping fuel into a Cleveland-based engine that's been reverse-engineered into an unusable piece of scrap iron to satisfy the government.
The thing has been in the family since 1984. I think it's finally time to disown the piece of crap - but it stays for one reason: Given the opportunity, Dad would probably build a shrine to the styling of this thing, and its designer, Don DeLaRossa (who carried the Mark V's design with him to Chrysler, where he applied it to the 1980 Cordoba and Imperial).
Not a day will go by without some comment about the perfection of the Mark V's lines. If he only knew this same fellow had helmed the Mustang II styling team a few years earlier...
If there is anything to sum this up: Be glad that our Mustangs don't have glued-down trunkmats - they attract moisture like flies to a garbage heap. The floorpans on this car are perfect, by comparison (and probably the only perfect thing this car will ever have).
-Kurt
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