Heading for Chicago's western suburbs on side streets to avoid Friday afternoon rush hour traffic, I passed a corner mechanic's shop of the kind that once serviced Everyman's car in the era before national chains took over. In my Chicago childhood, my dad and I would walk along automobile row, and we'd often see classic cars like Cord 810s and Packard Super 8s sitting in used car lots, their once shiny paint dulled and chrome pitted, forlornly waiting for adoption. And here on the corner was an image straight out of that childhood...a Lincoln Model K behind a chain-link fence. I circled the block to have a closer look...
She appeared to be a limousine from no earlier than 1937, as that year the big K Series adopted streamlined teardrop headlight fairings like the junior Lincoln Zephyr line. The blue cloisonné Art Deco emblem announcing the V12 power unit (a 65 degree L-head of 414 cubic inches, making 150 hp) seemed in perfect shape, and all the trim pieces seemed to be there, including the racing greyhound mascot. Perhaps she had once shuttled politicians or executives to meetings downtown, or wealthy dowagers to the opera...
Back in the days when she had somebody to keep her washed and waxed for her next assignment, she looked more like the car pictured below. In fact, she may actually be the 1937 car pictured below, right down to the color, the side-mounted spares, and the fog lights fronting the proud Lincoln grille...
Now she waits for somebody to awaken her from her slumbers and put her back into the roadworthy condition she deserves. She's a rare one; only 977 Model Ks left the factory in 1937, down from 1434 in 1934. Sales were hurt by the introduction of the lower-priced Lincoln Zephyr in 1936, and by the ongoing Depression, which meant the $4,200-$7,400 price range would've bought a pretty decent house. The Zephyr, with a smaller, initially less-reliable V12 based on the Ford V8, sold ten to twenty times as many cars because of prices 50 to 70 percent lower. The Model K, like the '36 Zephyr and '40 Continental, was a pet project of Edsel Ford, and the basic lines of the standard bodies for these cars was set down by designer Bob Gregorie. On the Model K, special coach builders also worked their magic, as on the 1937 Touring Cabriolet below, bodied by Brunn. The small, tinted panes above the windshield were a futuristic touch...
Future design themes also appeared in this 1938 Touring Coupe with special body built in very small numbers by Judkins. Notice the continuous sweep of glass in those big side windows, predicting the GM hardtop convertibles by over a decade, and echoing the "Vutotal" coupes built by French coach builders like Letourneur et Marchand* at around the same time. Only 416 Model Ks would be built in 1938, and another 133 in 1939. In 1940, the year before Pearl Harbor, the line came to an end. Lincoln would not return to the upper levels of the luxury market until 1956, with the Continental Mark II.
But we will probably return to this corner in Chicago to have a look at other treasures...
*Footnote: A postwar Letourneur-bodied Delage is featured in the post for April 23, 2016.
Photo credits:
Top, 2nd & 4th from top, and bottom photo: the author
3rd: autogallery.org.ru
5th (Brunn Cabriolet): wikimedia
6th: George Havelka
7th: pinterest.com
8th: howstuffworks.com
No comments:
Post a Comment