Old, abandoned, decrepit cars are a kind of macabre fascination of mine. From my days as a kid playing around in one of the stranger sections of western Washington, poking around on overgrown dirt paths that went to nowhere but more wooded forests and deep blackberry thickets, the occasional find of an abandoned car became akin to finding a dead body. Stay with me, it’s not as weird as it first sounds. Think about a good junkyard crawl and correlate it to a cemetery…you expect to see pried-apart remains of cars that once had life, had purpose, had an owner who cared. The day I found a 1975 Monte Carlo in the middle of a long-abandoned dirt road that was quickly being overgrown by salal bushes and blackberry vines I felt like I stumbled across a dead body. Strange that in a small area of the peninsula I lived on that there were so many bodies to discover.

So what is this thing, this dead body in a vacant lot, long left to rot? This is one of the twelve 1977 Lincoln Continental Mark V coupes that found their way to Caribou Motor Company, where it was converted into a “Coloma”, a coupe-utility vehicle. No, this isn’t a funeral flower car or a hack job…at least, it wasn’t from the factory. The bed conversion was sorted out and when it was sold new, it would’ve been fully loaded (Lincoln, natch) and the A-pillars, roof, and the area from the B-pillars back to the tops of the fender caps, down to the first major horizontal body line would’ve been covered in vinyl in pure 1970s classiness.

So, put mildly, what the hell happened here? Not many one-offs from the Disco era age well, sure, but this is horrifying, and that’s before you check out the up-close shots of the sea-salvage states of the roof and the floor. The gigantic holes in the front fenders, where it appears that full-size spare tire mockups were installed have been left agape. You could probably pull the windshield out by hand with little effort, seeing how much metal is gone from the metal that was supposed to frame it. The interior floor has to be paper-thin, and the 460 underhood has been raided for parts at some point in time from the one super-blurry photo provided. But strangest of all is the rearward view…normally, a Coloma would have kept the Mark V’s humped trunk shape in the tailgate, but here, that doesn’t exist. Instead, the tailgate is level and flush, and the frenched-in license plate recess looks like it was raided from a G-body El Camino or station wagon, not a Ford product.

Astonishingly enough, this Lincoln is for sale with a $1,500 price tag. Being blunt, if the Cadillac limo brought a touch over $300 in scrap value, I’d expect at least that much out of what’s left of this car. It’s too far gone. You would need at least one whole, excellent Mark V parts car just for sheetmetal alone, and that doesn’t count engine, trans, suspension or the potential that the frame could be absolutely screwed. Yes, it’s unique and in a lingering, sad way it’s kind of cool. But sometimes, it’s best if you just leave the dead alone.

Facebook Marketplace link: 1977 Lincoln Coloma by Caribou Motor Company

Thanks to John Paul Shadle for the tip!