As I continue my self-imposed Mopar exile, I have found myself hunting down some older dream cars of mine. Among the G-bodies, Camaros, Mavericks and even the odd AMC product, but you don’t just hunt aimlessly…unless it’s getting close to midnight and you have been awake since six in the morning, at which point it’s time to get away from the computer and go crash out. No…to do the great Internet car search right, you first need to figure out what it is that you want the car to do. Want a great-handling car with some guts? Go C4 Corvette or third-gen F-body. Want something that can be beat on to no end yet is able to stand up to the abuse and look good doing it? Mopar “Late-B”, any GM B-body made after 1977 or the Maverick/Comet twins. But I had something else in mind when I located this 1972 Lincoln Continental Mark IV coupe.

From the moment that the 1967 Cadillac Eldorado came onto the scene, both the front-wheel-drive Caddy and the Lincoln Continental became locked in a war for who had the ultimate personal luxury coupe. And that’s not exactly correct…you see, a personal luxury coupe was more like a Chevrolet Monte Carlo or a Pontiac Grand Prix around this time period. The Eldorado and the Continental Mark series were status symbols: you didn’t just buy another Chevrolet or Buick or Plymouth. You had a Cadillac. You had a Lincoln. Your car was a statement, that you had money, that you had style, that you enjoyed the finer things in life like an all-leather interior, every possible gadget you could throw at a car in the early 1970s. You had enough power under your right foot, but it wasn’t the boy-racer power of the muscle cars, but instead a wave of torque that carried you. The suspension was yielding, the room was plentiful, and you felt like a million bucks driving one.

I’ve always been drawn to the Mark IV, namely because a neighbor I lived near when I was a young kid had one: dark jade green, with the Lincoln turbine wheels, and only a set of glass packs to let the 460 talk to the world with authority deviated from the day Mr. Muehler bought the car new. Small bumpers on a car that is nineteen feet long. The hidden headlights, chromed waterfall grille that aped Rolls-Royce, and that spare tire hump on the trunk lid. It said “luxury” like few cars did back then…which was easy to do in a neighborhood filled with Hondas and K-cars.

It’s obnoxiously large, impractical enough that a Hummer driver can feel better by comparison, drinks enough fuel to earn you a “thank you” card from OPEC, and to be honest, I’m not sure if there is another car out there that I’d drive for thousands of miles on-end. From the silver-dollar hubcaps to the acres of deep red interior, as long as someone else is paying for the fuel, this Lincoln would eat the miles up as you stretched out in the top-tier ride of the early 1970s. Would we change anything? Not one single solid item. Let the 460 do it’s thing as you sit back and watch the view roll right on by.

eBay Link: 1972 Lincoln Continental Mark IV