Lincoln Motor Company
The Lincoln Motor Company was founded in August 1917 by Henry Leland and his son Wilfred. Among the founders of Cadillac, Leland had sold the company to General Motors in 1909, remaining on as an executive until 1917, when he left over a dispute with GM President William Durant. Naming Lincoln Motor Company after Abraham Lincoln, the first President for whom he ever voted (1864), Leland financed the company by securing a $10 million contract to build Liberty V12 aircraft engines, breaking ground on the Lincoln Motor Company Plant. To build the Liberty engines, Lincoln sourced parts from other manufacturers; along with cylinders produced by Ford, other parts were sourced from Buick, Cadillac, Marmon, and Packard. In total, 6,500 Liberty V12 engines were produced by Lincoln before the end of World War I ceased wartime production.
Lincoln Motor Company
In another requirement to ensure its survival, the model cycle of Lincoln was extended from three years to nine years. While largely dispensing with major yearly model changes, the decision established design consistency and shifting resources towards quality control. For 1966, to better compete with the Cadillac Coupe de Ville and the Imperial Crown/LeBaron Coupe, Lincoln added a two-door hardtop to the Continental model line. After the 1967 model year, Lincoln ended production of the Continental 4-door convertible. At 5,712 pounds, the 1967 Lincoln Continental Convertible is the heaviest non-limousine car ever produced by Ford Motor Company; as of 2018, it is the final factory-produced four-door convertible sold in North America.
During the 1960s, Ford sought to develop a new flagship vehicle as a successor for the Continental Mark II. While the Lincoln Continental served as a close competitor to the Cadillac de Ville series and Chrysler Imperial, as Cadillac shifted the Cadillac Eldorado to the personal luxury segment in 1967, a segment that Ford exited in 1957 after the withdrawal of the Continental Mark II. As a response, in April 1968, the Continental Mark III was released as a 1969 model. While not officially a Lincoln, the Continental Mark III was marketed through the Lincoln-Mercury dealer network, who would service the vehicle. Over a number of various names considered for the vehicle, Continental Mark III was chosen, as Henry Ford II felt the Continental Mark II did not have a proper successor (thus restarting the nomenclature).