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Conventional wisdom says that with all the resources the Ford Motor Company had at its disposal, the upscale Lincoln division should have been a viable contender in the luxury car market during the Fifties. In one regard, Lincoln was certainly that: a contender in terms of accoutrements and styling. But it didn’t dominate the segment like Cadillac, which outsold Lincoln with ease from 1950-’55. Packard managed to outperform Lincoln during those years as well, except in 1954 when the Independent sold 6,028 fewer cars. Instead, Lincoln — on paper — had a more exclusive vibe, much like Chrysler’s low-production Imperial, and even Lincoln outsold that cross-town rival by a consistently wide margin.
History’s raw numbers are hard to ignore, yet they don’t tell the whole story. There certainly wasn’t a lack of effort on Lincoln’s part to close the sales gap between itself and the two industry giants ahead of it. The division’s first serious push to right the postwar ship began with a completely redesigned line of cars introduced for the 1952 model year.
Gone was the base Lincoln, and, while the Cosmopolitan remained, it had been demoted
