The Lincoln Town Car is a car from Lincoln, built from 1980 to 2011, in the age of turbocharging and the first electronic engine management. Under the bonnet: gasoline engine.
The story
The Lincoln Town Car is a model line of full-size luxury sedans that was marketed and produced by the Lincoln division of the American automaker Ford Motor Company. Deriving its name from a limousine body style, Lincoln marketed the Town Car from 1981 to 2011, with the nameplate previously serving as the flagship trim of the Lincoln Continental. Produced across three generations for thirty model years, the Town Car was marketed directly against luxury sedans from Cadillac and Chrysler. Marketed nearly exclusively as a four-door sedan (a two-door sedan was offered for 1981 only), many examples of the Town Car were used for fleet and livery (limousine) service. From 1983 to its 2011 discontinuation, the Town Car was the longest car produced by Ford worldwide, becoming the longest mass-production car sold in North America from 1997 to 2011. While not a direct successor of the Town Car, the Lincoln MKS would become the longest American sedan until 2016 (overtaken by the Cadillac CT6).
From 1980 until 2007, the Lincoln Town Car was assembled in Wixom, Michigan (Wixom Assembly) alongside the Lincoln Continental, LS, and Mark VI, VII, and VIII. After Wixom's closure, Town Car production moved to Southwold, Ontario (St. Thomas Assembly) alongside the similar Ford Crown Victoria and the Mercury Grand Marquis. The final Lincoln Town Car was produced on August 29, 2011. Within the Lincoln model line, the Town Car was not directly replaced; the nameplate was used from 2012 to 2019 to denote livery/limousine/hearse variants of the Lincoln MKT. For 2017, the revived Continental replaced
What is underneath
Power comes from gasoline engine. The layout matters: a front engine drives the rear wheels, the classic proportion — long bonnet, cabin set back — that most people picture when they picture a sports saloon or a grand tourer. These are manufacturer figures carried by Wikipedia and Wikidata, not road-test measurements.
Its place in the line
Its family tree is legible: it took over from the Lincoln Continental (1980). Its contemporaries in the catalogue — the Audi Quattro, the Dodge Ram, the Mitsubishi Pajero — show what else the money bought that year. Nearby in the Lincoln catalogue sit the Lincoln First Call and the Lincoln Funeral Car.
What it costs now
MotorJury scores cars on the United States complaint and recall record, and the Lincoln Town Car has none: too old, too rare, or never sold there. Its value today is a collector's question, decided by provenance and condition rather than by a class average.