Picture Time: What the Hell Happened to This Town Car?
Browsing on The Facebook recently presented me with an astonishing feat of custom bodywork, one I felt compelled to share in a very special Custom Edition Picture Time Edition of Custom.
It’s a one-off modification of a 2006 Lincoln Town Car, and you need to see it.
The original owner of this masterpiece was apparently a former attorney general (who undoubtedly had a home full of priceless crystal and gold leaf antiques).
That owner obviously hankered for days gone by, where one could purchase a grand Packard in the finest tradition of luxury and craftsmanship.
So, he decided he would modify a Town Car, purchased from his local Lincoln-Mercury showroom, and create the thing we see here. Modifications both front and rear have… occurred. It’s important to keep in mind the amount of money spent on this custom fabrication.
According to the listing on Detroit’s Craigslist, it’s a one-off “Signature L Special Edition Packard Series,” and only two of the words in that designation are real things: the Signature and the L (for long-wheelbase).
Interior modifications are fewer, and include a Packard placard on the dash and a horrible embroidered Girl Scout badge Packard logo on the wheel.
The seller is asking $8,000 firm, which is not the adjective I’d use to describe his logic.
I can’t.
Edit: H/t to commenter Dal20402, who dug up some information on the former attorney general owner in question.
[Images via seller]
Interested in lots of cars and their various historical contexts. Started writing articles for TTAC in late 2016, when my first posts were QOTDs. From there I started a few new series like Rare Rides, Buy/Drive/Burn, Abandoned History, and most recently Rare Rides Icons. Operating from a home base in Cincinnati, Ohio, a relative auto journalist dead zone. Many of my articles are prompted by something I'll see on social media that sparks my interest and causes me to research. Finding articles and information from the early days of the internet and beyond that covers the little details lost to time: trim packages, color and wheel choices, interior fabrics. Beyond those, I'm fascinated by automotive industry experiments, both failures and successes. Lately I've taken an interest in AI, and generating "what if" type images for car models long dead. Reincarnating a modern Toyota Paseo, Lincoln Mark IX, or Isuzu Trooper through a text prompt is fun. Fun to post them on Twitter too, and watch people overreact. To that end, the social media I use most is Twitter, @CoreyLewis86. I also contribute pieces for Forbes Wheels and Forbes Home.
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That landau would look so much better in Louis Vuitton print. He really cut corners here.
The overall silhouette is hideous, but I respect a lot of what they were trying to do. The hood protrusion sticks out too far and I think the grille tilt does a lot to throw it off. It didn't work on the Rolls-Royce Camargue and it doesn't work here. And yeah, if you're going to go this far, having a proper Continental kit out back is very necessary. The paint and rear fender treatment is actually kind of cool though, and this is the first recent car with a non-formal roofline that I've seen that I think manages to pull off the landau top.