The High Point of American Luxury Cars - 1969 Lincoln Mark III

Hello , everyone .

My name is Adam .

I'm a classic car enthusiast and owner and here to share with you today my 1969 Lincoln Continental Mark three .

So special treat today for those of you who like , I'll call them mafia style cars .

This is the pinnacle I would say of that .

It would also be the pinnacle of what I would call a vacuum centric engineering .

This car has a lot of vacuum powered accessories and also some very quirky engineering which I will talk about as we go into the car in more detail .

This car is finished in what Lincoln called Maroon , which is a non metallic , you know , burgundy color .

I believe it's the same color as the black cherry paint that mercury use .

They just called it a different name and peeking in the garage , you can see a black cherry colored 68 Park lane that appears identical to this in terms of color .

So I believe it was the same color , but this is a burgundy uh or sorry maroon paint with the red interior and then a black vinyl top .

A few production statistics on this car .

1969 was the second best selling year for the mark three .

They made the mark three from 69 to 71 .

And you can see that they sold 23,000 of these .

So it wasn't a huge seller , but that wasn't bad volume for such an expensive car .

You could see the price of this car .

The base price was $6800 in 1969 which was a lot of money and it has a very powerful premium fuel 4 60 V eight putting out 365 horsepower , which is admittedly not net horse power , which is the ratings that they went to in 1972 .

But this would be the horsepower without all the exhaust and accessories and everything .

So interestingly , as you go down from 69 to 70 to 71 the horsepower rating of this 460 stays the same .

It was 3 65 in each year .

But truthfully , the net horsepower just kind of decreased every year as more and more accessories and emissions controls were added to the vehicle .

So of all the years , 69 I would say is really the most truly powerful uh of the three years for the mark three .

It's kind of in terms of the weight , you can see the weight curb weight was 47 £62 not a light car by any stretch of the imagination , a bit heavier than the 70 but significantly lighter than the 71 I believe they started putting more base content in the standard between 70 and 71 driving the weight up .

So yes , for comparison , you can see the first year of the Mark four really increased the sales volume in almost 49,000 .

So it was a good seller , but it wasn't an overly great seller .

And I'll flip back here just to compare to the Cadillac Eldorado of the year .

So you can see what the production figures for that were .

I also do own a 69 El Dorado , which I will feature in a different video but similar production figures with 23,000 units sold per year in 1969 of the El Dorado selling about the same number of units .

Interestingly though by the time the Mark four came around , the new El Dorado had come out , the Mark four was out selling the El Dorado by about 30% .

I don't have the Marty report on this vehicle , but I do have from Marty Auto works , the original invoice from the factory to the dealer for the car .

So you can see it's a maroon paint car .

It has a leather interior with the vinyl trim , black vinyl roof , the high torque axle , which is the 3 to 1 open differential as opposed to the standard 2 75 to 1 I believe , which is kind of humorous because I don't think that this 460 needs any more torque multiplication than what it has .

But that's what comes on this vehicle , white side wall tires , which on this car were actually triple stripe bias fly tires .

I still have the originals .

I think the trunk still has the original spare .

So I'll show that to you because they're really unique .

Like I said , they're triple striped for now .

I'm just riding on standard single stripe white walls .

I wanted , I did not want to risk a blowout with really old tires , power seats , tilt , steering wheel , cruise control .

We're a window to fogger , automatic temperature control .

This one does have the AM radio and eight track tape player , automatic head lamp dimmer , which is that little device here which senses the oncoming headlights .

And then if you have it turned on , it will always have your bright side unless it senses light and then it will automatically dim them and then go back to bright lights once the light is passed tinted glass headrest , the appearance protection group , which is the door guards and then power door locks .

So this car totaled out at 66 49 which is a lot of money and that is the dealer invoice price .

The retail price was 8600 dollars , which was a small fortune in 1969 as you can imagine .

So , a couple of humorous things here on the invoice , six gallons of gas , which they were charging the dealers 6 30 cents a piece per gallon .

So that's pretty humorous dealer advertising fund of $35 .

So this is something that still exists today .

There's a number of things on here that for those of you who haven't worked in a dealership or in the automotive space , you'll see .

Hold back and option , hold back , hold back is basically an amount of money in this case , about 2.5% of the invoice price .

That is not something that's part of the , it's basically extra money that gets remitted to the dealer after the vehicle is sold , but they don't have to pay commission on hold back money .

So it's a way of almost protecting the dealer and its salespeople from itself and not selling below the true cost .

This is something that's generally not visible in terms of the dealer invoice , but it's money that the dealer will get later .

That's why it's called hold back .

So for those of you who don't know , often people get coached to say you should try to get a car close to dealer invoice .

Well , there's a lot of things outside the invoice price that the dealer can , can get like different incentives that they might be able to claim back to the first vehicle they sold in the month or this hold back money .

That's not part of the invoice that they get later on .

This vehicle was sold originally to a dealer in Norwich , Connecticut .

It still has a Connecticut plate from 1976 on the front that I had when I bought the car and I thought it was cool .

So I kept it built in Wickham just like all these vehicles , all these Lincolns were .

So I'll talk about some of the unique features of the vehicle because this is probably the most well built mainstream American car that I've ever seen or owned .

It's extremely well put together .

It's , I would call it high tech for the day .

Um complicated , but it is a beautiful car to ride and drive .

So talking about the exterior first , maybe it does have vacuum operated headlight doors and there's a big system which I'll show you under hood that controls that you basically flip this dash switch in here and you pull it and the headlights will deploy .

There's also a little light that goes on .

You'll see it go off in a second when the headlight door is fully open .

If I still have enough vacuum in the tank and they may not to suggest that the headlight doors are indeed fully open .

So they must not , he totally opened .

Oh yeah , they're not .

Hence why that light is on .

So I'll start the car up here just so you can see the headlight doors and you can watch this light go off .

So there it goes , telling me to buckle my seat belt and then the door jar lights on because I have the driver's door still open .

Once I close the driver's door , you'll see that that goes away so you can see the headlights and then if I push the button to close down , there they go .

So we'll shut this off as I talk for a moment about some other features as you saw on the window stick of this car does have automatic climate control .

So you move the temperature , you can choose between low and high fan speed settings , which it's not just two speeds .

There's actually , I believe four lower motor speeds .

This just increases or decreases the voltage that goes to the motor as it selects one of those speeds .

So it's a bit faster on the high setting and a bit slower on the low setting , it does have a uh the blower style rear window defogger which I can turn on .

You can hear , you can see the outlet in the middle there .

You can also see when I step on the brakes .

There are fiber optic lamps in the middle that you can see in your mirror to make sure that your brake lights are working .

This car does have , it says rear vent there and on the back package shelf , you can see that it has some ventilation , louvers .

So if you want to keep your windows closed and you want some better fresh air ventilation , you just turn this ring from open , sorry from closed to open and it then opens , you can see the Louvers on the back that and it will exhaust out on the rear package tray .

So really nice feature .

This is the selector for the automatic dimmer .

So you can have it off .

You can determine if you want it to kick on when it senses light near or far away .

And again , if you want it off , you just leave it there .

These vents can be individually shut off with this little pull out , which is a nice feature as well .

The wiper system on this vehicle is very unique .

It's continuously variable speed .

So the wipers will wipe uh slowly to fast depending upon how you rotate this outer .

Uh I guess it's the inner knob .

So it's not an intermittent feature .

It just changes how fast the wiper wipes across the glass , which is an interesting approach .

And as opposed to being powered by an electric motor , the wipers on this car are powered off of the power steering pump .

So with the car off , uh you have no wiper power , um just an interesting approach and something that's very different from , from what you typically see .

You can also see the full array of gauges on here , some extremely thick piled carpeting , which is very luxurious .

This is the intake air aspirator for the automatic climate control , which senses what the interior temperature is .

The eight track tape player is located here and this is a AM radio combination you couldn't get AM F MA track you just get AM eight track this year .

So this buyer elected for that , there's a interior dash courtesy light here .

Uh There we go .

This other switch moves the power antenna up and down so you can hear it kind of probably can't hear it extending , but I just pushed it and it started to go up .

I pushed it the other direction and it goes back down till you hear a ratcheting click .

So now it's stowed away .

This is the cruise control on off switch , which is really interesting .

You push it on to um to activate the cruise and at least turn it on .

Then you push this lever at the end of the turn signal stock to set the speed and you pull it back to turn it off .

This dual light does illuminate .

It's just a little faint to see in the bright light .

But when you turn it on this little light comes on and to , to show you that the cruise control is activated as well .

It's kind of a nice feature .

Another interesting thing about the 69 model year .

It is the only year for hidden wipers and it's the only year for this interior trim .

In 70 and 71 they went to different door panels , different seat patterns .

What I from what I understand , it's the first application where the factory or designers tried to have this Rouch um purposefully included in the design to give it an overly rich look .

And from what I've read about a number of the factory , um the seats that were sent to the factory were sent back because they thought that this was a defect and it actually was what the designers intended for it to have this rich gathered look , I think it would be called .

So there probably was supposed to be more gathering on this rear seat and that look , this one really doesn't have much at all .

My guess is that because of what I said , the uh they were rejected and thought that thought that the seats were defective .

So perhaps that's why they changed the interior after just one year , there are also many different variations of interiors on the 69 mark threes .

Uh just because it's a 69 does not mean that volunteers are alike .

So you'll see the earlier cars like this one have these white uh dial indicators .

Uh The later ones that are built later in the model , you have orange or a yellowy color .

This also has , um , well , so this has the early built uh dials .

This has a later built steering wheel , I believe .

Um sometimes you'll see a different steering wheel on these and then later in the model year , they added some embroidery right in this area on the back seat , which this one does not have .

So depending on where you are in the model year , you may have embroidery there , you may have different covered color dial faces .

Um , and I believe you might also have differences in steering wheels .

So I , I'm absolutely positive about the dial face and the embroidery in the back .

But very strange .

This is also the only year where this , uh , these wood panels are not real , they're fake .

They are quite good and convincing .

They're grained , they look nice , but in 70 and 71 those become actual real wood .

So I don't think Ford believed that they could get the durability out of real wood .

And somehow they determined that they would try later on on the door panel here , I'll close the door , listen to how this door closes .

I mean , it's just a solid , solid door .

There's an interesting bypass switch here .

You can see it says bypass if you want to close the windows with the key in the off position , which is as it is now .

So if I tried to , I guess , sorry , it's in the accessory position , I'll turn it off .

So you can see the window won't operate right now .

But if you hold this bypass switch , you can now operate any of the windows .

So it's a nice feature when you don't have the key on to allow you to operate the windows , you can also lock them out for the passengers .

The door lock system in this car is pneumatic .

It is not electric .

So when I push the button , you'll hear from down in this area , a little uh air noise , you can hear it release .

So as opposed to the later cars , the Mark four had electric motors .

This is vacuum operated .

So this car has a lot of vacuum operated accessories , the door locks , the cruise control , the automatic climate control , among other things .

Um So very complicated .

Thankfully , all the vacuum lines still work .

You can imagine you have to run vacuum lines into the doors for this .

And uh I'm just thankful that everything on this car still works , including the automatic climate control and the air conditioning .

So one last look , I showed you this header panel with these lights , a lot of room in the front seat , not a lot of room in the back seat , but a really intimate and beautiful compartment back there .

There's a switch for the lights , a switch for the power windows , there's the reading light that's in the sea pillar , a very rich headline around these uh some sort of woven fabric .

It looks very expensive and rich overall .

This car , the attention to detail and the way it's put together is to me just blows my mind .

It's , it's I have a 69 Eldorado .

And while that's a nice car , this car just surpasses it and smoothness and uh material quality , I would say by a long shot , the Eldorado does have a great engine and transmission though , some courtesy lights on the doors and a nice brushed aluminum panel on the door with the speaker grill , um , for the AM radio as well in there .

This is the , I think it's called the Cavalry twill vinyl roof .

This is a factory vinyl roof and they're only padded on the side of the , of the roof .

Uh I would say to the side of the sea .

So this area is padded .

This is not , that's one way that you can tell aside from this interesting grain , it kind of has a , a very linear shape to it .

If the vinyl roof is original .

One thing I'd advise if you have one of these cars is don't wash the top of your car , just wipe it off with a damp rag .

Water comes down and collects down here and you'll see a lot of these cars where they'll have bubbles and pock marks down here where rust is forming under the vinyl top .

This one somehow must have always been garaged and there is no bubbling at all and I try to preserve that as best as I can .

This is the rear window louver that exhausts out the cabin air .

When you have that vent switch turned on , there's the area where it takes in the air from inside the car .

Let me grab the keys here so I can show you the trunk .

Another interesting thing about 69 only is the key position is way down here under the dash , which I guess is a nice anti theft feature if somebody is trying to take your car .

Although you can hotwire these cars very easily , hard to find where the key placement is .

Nothing on the steering column .

In 70 they went to the , the column placement pretty good sized trunk in this car , especially compared to the Mark four , which is tiny .

The mark four , the fuel tank is underneath the trunk pan .

So it doesn't have this deep .

Well , like this vehicle has , it's more of a shallow , well because the Mark four , although the platform was shared with the Thunderbird , it's based on the Torino .

It's actually gussied up Torino that they used for the Thunderbird .

And the Mark four , this Mark three platform is totally different and is shared with the Thunderbird .

But I think that this is a more expensive platform and more well done .

See if I can , I can't easily get this cover off to show you the spare tire under there .

But you can look up pictures of the , the um , the car with its factory tires and see the triple striped white walls .

By the way , there's no spare tire under this hut .

This is all just looks nicely integrated reverse lamps into the bumper .

You can see the hub caps on this car .

These hub caps , I shouldn't call them hub caps .

Wheel covers are extremely heavy .

Certainly not something they would do today from a weight perspective .

Nor would they have dwarfs that are this thick .

I mean , look at how thick that door is .

A lot of times these cars have some glass alignment issues where this glass will be too far forward or back or won't touch the window rub strip .

I think what happens is when people close the door , they don't push here , they push on the glass and over time it just walks the glass forward and back , there are bolts on the bottom of the door that you can use to readjust the glass .

I had to do that in this car .

It's now all the windows sealed correctly .

That was not easy .

Um , not much on this car to work on , aside from basic tune ups is easy .

Speaking of which I had to replace the headlight motors , which I showed you our vacuum actuated .

I replaced them with units that these have an internal spring that when the vacuum is lost , the headlight doors open .

So you'll see a lot of these with the doors open I bought and these from a rebuilder who highly recommended taking that spring out .

It really doesn't do anything and now they stay closed forever .

I can have the car shut off for a year and the headlight doors will never open and they operate just as well .

So I highly recommend that if you have one of these cars get a set of rebuilt motors that don't have those springs in them .

Otherwise you're going to still be chasing down other vacuum leaks .

I have not had any problem with these and they operate just great .

The dealer added this hood ornament and this is not correct .

It's actually the old Lincoln logo .

The mark three was the first use of this newer style Lincoln logo .

Customer must have wanted it .

I think it looks good in the early prototypes .

They actually had that hood ornament on them and it got taken away for safety standards .

Remember this was when around that time when Ralph Nader came out with the book unsafe at any speed .

So all the car companies got rid of their hood ornaments out of fear of liability that they were going to be potentially sued because they could impale people .

Interestingly , I think by 70 72 71 72 the hood ornament started coming back , but you'll see it for a period of time there in the late sixties , early seventies that all the hood ornaments left .

And then as an example , like my 76 Eldorado had a big old hood ornament just like that .

So I've kept it as opposed to returning it to stock because the early design photos I've seen of this car actually had that hood ornament and it got taken off for safety reasons .

So it seems to be in character with what the designers wanted .

So I mentioned this is the only year for the , the non hidden wipers .

The 70 and 71 have those wipers tucked under the hood .

So let's open the hood now .

Yeah .

Yeah .

And there's the premium fuel 4 60 V eight again , an extremely powerful motor .

Very , very smooth .

I mean , just a joy to drive a couple of tips , I would say , for those of you who have , who have these motors , make sure that your radiator is not clogged .

I've had this one record when I'm running the air conditioning in the summer time .

It never really got hot .

It just got hotter .

It's still the original radiator in .

After all these years , this car only has about 35,000 miles on it .

But , um , I put this record radiator in and the car doesn't get anywhere near hot at all .

You want these to run cool .

I have 100 and 60 degree thermostat in here and you want them to run cool because they're high compression and they tend to spark knock very easily even with premium fuel if you're running the stock timing .

So I would , I run this one with premium fuel , plus a couple of gallons of racing fuel , plus lead additive .

And while that sounds excessive , I want this motor to last a long time and that's what it takes for it , not to spark dock with the stock timing .

So it is what it is .

It's a joy to drive and I don't mind it .

You can see the air conditioning .

I've unhooked , it's still cool here in Michigan and when you have the auto climate control on the air conditioning always operates and I just don't want it always operating .

Uh When the weather is cold outside , I'll plug it in as the summer comes , comes back .

It's just one wire .

Very simple to disconnect and reconnect these cars .

If you're looking for the voltage regulator , it is not integral to the alternator .

Uh This car when I got it had an overcharging problem .

I was searching for the voltage regulator and it's actually on the back of the alternator , there's a little black plate and I was able to find one on ebay .

So just a tip for those of you .

If you're searching for that voltage regulator , it's , it's on the back of the alternator and it's removable .

So make sure that you're not overcharging your batteries .

This is one of the reservoir tanks for the vacuum system .

There are others .

There's another here here .

This is interesting .

This is the power steering reservoir and that is just a reservoir .

There is no pump right there .

In 69 the power steering pump is actually on the front of the crank shaft and this was something that Lincoln had back to , I believe the 4 30 V eight when it was introduced in 1958 did that and they kept it through 69 .

It was the last year and then , then there's an accessory driven pump that's in this area , but there's no belt down there .

It is just a reservoir and the pump again is on the front of the crank shaft .

So some unique engineering , there's the cruise control Servo and the distributor cap .

A lot of times these distributors get stuck .

I highly recommend every couple of years you just rotate them back and forth and then reset the timing .

Otherwise they have a tendency to stick in place and they can be a bear to get unstuck this one .

Thankfully , when I bought the car wasn't stuck too much .

Sometimes you can lightly tap with a hammer on this vacuum , advance in both directions and it will free it up if that doesn't do it .

Um Sometimes there's a tool you can put on here like a clamp with a slide hammer and yank this up to get it loose .

Uh But it is again , it's just good preventive maintenance .

If you , if you move that distributor around every couple of years , you're not going to have that problem .

So I always just , every couple of years loosen the hold down bolt , move it back and forth maybe about 10 times , then get it back roughly in the same position .

Start the car , set the timing , tighten it back down another tip , check your fan clutches to make sure that they are enabling the fan to rotate at appropriate speed when the motor is warm .

These fan clutches just don't seem to last like the GM vehicles .

So I finally go out around 40 50,000 miles and you'll see the fan just doesn't turn very fast , even when the motor is hot and the air conditioning's running , they're very easy to replace .

So be sure to check that and again , you know , check your radiator to make sure that it's allowing the car to cool appropriately .

Don't think I have any other tips under the hood .

Here , there are a couple witness marks still from the factory showing .

It's a very , very clean car .

I bought it from the son of the second owner in Michigan .

So I don't know , the owner had passed away .

The son didn't know much about it .

So I don't have much of the history , but it's very clearly a low mileage car and none of this stuff has been apart when I replaced the headlight motors which are down here .

None of that had been apart .

They were all original car still has the original headlights in it .

A lot of times these exhaust manifolds will crack , particularly on the passenger side .

So if you hear an exhaust leak , I've had to replace this one .

Just something to be aware of .

Other than that , I'll just start it up one last time so you can hear the motor run .

It is cold , so it'll be on fast .

Idol .

This car did have dual exhaust from the factory with resonators which I have replaced and put on .

You can hear it's really quiet .

You can fast .

I I should also note for those of you who have Fords of this era , you really shouldn't be doing what I'm doing right now .

Do not operate these cars before 1972 in park unattended .

They did have issues with the cars jumping into reverse .

And , uh , you'll notice that the later for its like at 72 this gear shifting mechanism becomes very nay for that reason .

But in this year , you know , I can just kind of glide through all the gears .

There's no nas at all .

Um But one thing you should check is make sure that when the cars in park , if you just lightly tug on this uh park lever , that it doesn't go into reverse , what you'll find is on a lot of these cars .

If you do that , it will go into reverse .

So this column is what holds the car in park and that park lock wears out over time .

Uh And then it just enables it so that you can go like this and then you'll tap it into reverse .

So I highly highly recommend two things .

One don't leave these cars unattended , running in park .

And uh number two , just check so that you're aware if your car is really prone to do that , push on this a little bit with some light pressure , don't yank on it and you'll end up breaking the lock , but make sure that it actually does hold and park .

I do have some one of my vehicles where that is not true .

So I just always make sure not to leave that one running and unattended , um , for that reason .

So I just want everybody to be aware of that .

You'll see some of the later Fords you'll buy from the seventies .

We even have a sticker that's put on the dash by the dealer somewhere that says not to do that .

And it's because of these cars , it has a great feel to it .

And the later ones are super nay and they feel clunky , but this one is not as safe as the later Ford .

So I just want everybody to be aware of that .

So that's it for this vehicle .

Hope you enjoyed this video .

And if you like to subscribe to my youtube channel , I will show you more vehicles so far .

I've only displayed fords , but I have G M vehicles too and I'll get those out soon .

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