That gloriously styled 1957 Lincoln
By Jim Meachen
motorwayamerica.com
The memory is still vivid.
Many years ago I fancied myself a future designer of automobiles. For a few years after I became a teenager I thought design was what I wanted to do when I "grew up."
To hone my primitive skills I spent many an hour in high school study hall during my freshman and sophomore years drawing fanciful sketches of futuristic cars. Looking back on those days I came to realize my "habit" was probably more due to the fact that I was too lazy to open a math or history book and actually read than developing a talent for design.
That was in 1959 and 1960 and if memory serves many of my doodlings were of large-finned Detroit monsters because big cars with soaring tail fins were in vogue.
My favorite design in those days was the 1957 Lincoln. It caught my imagination. I fervently thought it was the pinnacle in automotive styling, the dream car. Oh my, the 1957 Lincoln!
Strange perhaps that European sports cars of the day or even the newly minted Chevrolet Corvette or Ford Thunderbird were not considered worthy of top billing on my sketch pad.
Indeed, I was in love with the Lincoln.
The long sweep of the chrome strip from front to back ending in a small V before wrapping under the taillight, and the dominate connecting strip that raised up at about a 45 degree angle through the center of the rear door from the side stripe to the window, setting off the neat but understated fins were just the right touches to my young thinking. Add to that the well-styled grille and the stacked dual headlights up front and the Lincoln was the picture of the way cars should look.
So as you view images of that Lincoln of yore on this page you are probably thinking, no wonder your designing urge never got past your 15th year of life.
Perhaps.
But more probably is the fact I had absolutely no artistic talent.
To this day when I see an abandoned '57 Lincoln decaying in a field I shed a tear. And when I occasionally see a beautifully restored Lincoln at a car show it makes my heart skip a beat.