Lincoln Motor Company
The Lincoln Motor Company Plant, built in Detroit, Michigan, by Henry Leland in 1917, was closed after 1952; subsequent Lincolns were produced alongside Mercury Montereys and Mercury Montclairs. For the 1957 model year, Ford opened Wixom Assembly in Wixom, Michigan, as a facility to specialize in Lincoln production. From 1957 to 2007, the facility produced Lincoln vehicles nearly exclusively, along with the Ford GT and several generations of the Ford Thunderbird.
For the 1956 model year, Ford Motor Company created the Continental Division, slotted above Lincoln as the flagship marque of Ford Motor Company. At its launch, Continental introduced the Continental Mark II as its model line, intended as a successor to the 1940-1948 Lincoln Continental personal luxury car. Offered as a two-door hardtop coupe, the Mark II broke from a number of American styling precedents of the time. While fitted with whitewall tires, the exterior was fitted with minimal chrome trim on the body sides; tailfins were left off of the body completely. In place of the bumper-mounted spare tire of the original Lincoln Continental, the trunklid of the Mark II showcased the design element, with a large imitation spare tire bulge (which fit over the actual spare tire inside the trunk). The Mark II was largely hand-built, with extensive quality testing done to each engine and transmission before leaving the factory.
Lincoln Continental
For the first time on a Lincoln-badged Continental, its namesake "Continental spare tire trunk" seen on the Mark Series was used as a decklid design feature. In addition, the decklid was lettered "CONTINENTAL" instead of "LINCOLN" (as was the Versaillles, the first Lincoln to do so). As Ford Motor Company intended for the Lincoln Continental to compete against the Cadillac Seville, the rear half of the car was designed with a sloping "bustle-back" decklid, drawing inspiration from the Lincoln-Zephyr of the late 1930s. The decklid design of the Continental proved less extreme than that of the Seville. The addition of a horizontal brushed-chrome strip that ran along each side of Continental, along with plentiful two-tone color combinations, gave it a more conventional appearance in comparison to the Cadillac.