The Wonderful Music of Life

1964 Chevrolet Impala SS Sport Coupe

1977 Lincoln Town Car

When General Motors downsized its entire B and C-body lineup in 1977, from the Chevrolet Impala all the way up to the Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham, Lincoln did nothing. The Continental simply kept growing, and by 1977 it had quietly become the largest mass-produced automobile sold anywhere on earth. The only vehicles longer were purpose-built limousines like the Rolls-Royce Phantom VI and the Soviet ZIL-4104.

The 1979 Town Car sat on a 127.2-inch wheelbase and stretched 233 inches bumper to bumper, wider than six and a half feet, with 42 inches of rear legroom. Under the hood sat a 402 cubic inch V8 producing 315 pound-feet of torque arriving at just 1,800 rpm, backed by a three-speed SelectShift automatic. You did not drive this car so much as pilot it.

The base sedan started at $11,200. Lincoln sold 76,458 of them for 1979 alone, nearly five times the number of coupes. Ford marketed the 1979 Continental specifically as the final traditional full-size American sedan, and they were right. The following year it arrived on a completely redesigned platform, shorter, lighter, and more fuel efficient.

The Chrysler Plainsman is the only concept station wagon known to exist from the entire 1950s and 60s. Designer Dave Scott sketched it in February 1954 and Ghia built it in Italy. When it arrived at the factory in Detroit on December 5, 1955, it immediately sank under its own weight. The lead-laden body was so heavy that a full New Yorker suspension had to be installed just so it could move.

It debuted at the 1956 Chicago Auto Show packed with features nobody had ever seen before: the first rear-facing third-row seat ever fitted to a station wagon, a full power tailgate with a retractable rear window, a power-operated hidden gas filler, rear entry steps, flow-through ventilation and a hidden spare tire behind the rear quarter panel. Every single one of those features eventually appeared on production station wagons sold by Plymouth, DeSoto, Dodge and Chrysler.

1960 Chevrolet Impala Convertible Custom