History
The Continental Mark III was the brainchild of Lee Iacocca, Ford's vice-president, car and truck group in 1965, who directed Design Vice President, Gene Bordinat, to "put a Rolls-Royce grille on a Thunderbird"[3] that September. Development was assigned by Iacocca to the new "Strawberry Studio"- a special development preproduction team led by Bordinat.[4] The Mark III was based on the fourth generation Lincoln Continental (1961–1969) and the four-door fifth generation Thunderbird[3] introduced for 1967. With the Thunderbird "dying in the marketplace"[3] Iacocca wanted to put the company's development investment to better use by expanding its platform over several models. The final design of the Mark III was introduced to a Lincoln-Mercury Focus Group in mid January 1966- receiving an overwhelmingly negative response from the group. Despite this feedback, both Iacocca and Henry Ford II loved the design and overruled objections. On March 24, 1966, the Mark III was given the green light for production.[4]
The Mark III was intended to compete head-to-head with the top of the domestic personal luxury car market, Cadillac's then rear wheel drive seventh generation Eldorado. This placed it above the second-tier premium personal luxury cars such as the Ford Thunderbird, Buick Riviera, Oldsmobile Toronado and Chrysler New Yorker coupe. As the Eldorado was built upon the Toronado frame, the Mark III was based on the Thunderbird's. While the side-rail frame was identical to the Thunderbird's, the Mark III bore almost 300 lb more bodywork. Power was adequate from Lincoln's Ford 385 engine-based 460 cid 365 bhp "gross horsepower" V8.
The Mark III was unveiled at the 1968 running of the 12 Hours of Sebring on March 23, 1968, as an early 1969 model. The model was a significant financial success because it combined the high unit revenue of a luxury model with the low development costs and fixed cost–amortizing utility of platform-sharing with a less-expensive, downscale car, in a vehicle that was appealing enough to buyers that many units were sold. Iacocca said, "We brought out the Mark III in April 1968, and in its very first year it outsold the Cadillac Eldorado, which had been our long-range goal. For the next five years [Marks III and IV] we had a field day, in part because the car had been developed on the cheap. We did the whole thing for $30 million, a bargain-basement price because we were able to use existing parts and designs."[5] Iacocca explained that this transformed the Lincoln-Mercury Division from losing money on every luxury car (via low unit sales on high fixed costs) to a profit center, making the new Mark series as big a success as any he ever had in his career[6]—a remarkable statement from an executive who led the programs for the original Ford Mustang and the Chrysler minivan family. Iacocca explained of the Mark series, "The Mark is [in 1984] Ford's biggest moneymaker, just as Cadillac is for General Motors. It's the Alfred Sloan theory: you have to have something for everybody [...] you always need a poor man's car [...] but then you need upscale cars, too, because you never know when the blue-collar guy is going to be laid off. It seems that in the United States the one thing you can count on is that even during a depression, the rich get richer. So you always have to have some goodies for them."[7]
Even though it was fundamentally a stretched, upscaled Thunderbird, the 1969 Continental Mark III traded on being a spiritual successor to the limited-production, hand-built, ultra-luxurious Continental Mark II produced by the short-lived Continental Division of the Ford Motor Company between 1956 and 1957. As such, it was branded and marketed only as a "Continental" within the Lincoln-Mercury Division structure - regardless that Lincoln was already selling a model called the "Lincoln Continental" - and the Lincoln name did not appear on the vehicle, VIN plate, factory paperwork, window sticker, nor official Ford Motor Company brochures and advertising. Moreover, the Continental Mark III designation had already been used on the 1958 Continental Mark III.
Nevertheless, the new Lincoln-Mercury Division-produced Continental Mark III was sold alongside the separate but distinct Lincoln-Mercury Division-affiliated and produced Lincoln Continental line of sedans. This created branding confusion during the entire production run of the Continental Mark series until the 1986 model year, when Continental was dropped as the make and the Mark VII was rebranded as a Lincoln with VINs adjusted accordingly.
The 1969 Mark III was built at the enlarged facility at the Wixom, Michigan assembly plant, home to the rest of the Mk III series and subsequent generations of the model. The listed retail price was US$6,741 ($0 in dollars ) and 30,858 were manufactured.
