The truth about our cars.
People that actually work on their Mark IIs will likely agree. There is little difference in working on a Cadillac, Chevy or Chrysler product of the period. As I'm sandblasting stamped parts for the '58 BelAir suspension I'm working on I feel like it's Deja Vu, all over again. Since a Mark II weighs 5000# and the BelAir weighs 3000# I would expect a gauge difference in the sheet metal, but there doesn't seem to be much. By far, the Mark II chassis is superior to the X-frame, and with it comes a weight penalty. That weight penalty is actually a safety penalty, as the frame is much more significant and rigid on the Mark II. The original 348 engine was just about as powerful as the Lincoln 368. It has 11" drum brakes while the Mark II has 12". Proportional to weight, the Chevy brakes are more efficient. Gas mileage was about the same. Steering components are near identical, maybe even proportionally stronger.
The bodies are nearly identical FORD/GM. Engineering is engineering and there was plenty of maker DNA swapping in the design/build departments. I've learned recently that Mark IIs uses some heat resistant steel in the floor pan, which likely added to the body rigidity, not a great plus. The bodies were made for the car by a local concern in Owasso, Michigan. From Elmer's reports the initial batch, (mostly IUs), used way too much lead, which had to be shaved off at the factory. Back window glass wasn't fitting and some had big gaps between the trim and finished bodied, calling for way too much reworking and repainting. There are stories of major panel interchangeability problems with body parts. They were built as sets and many that needed replacement panels had to alter what the factory was sending.
The Mark II and lots of other Fords have common parts, most notably Thunderbird and Lincoln hard parts and general Ford standard-issue electrical parts. If someone took a photo of the inside of a Mark II door you wouldn't know which Ford product you were looking at. All the cars used the same manufacturer's window regulators. They were just bracketed for individual cars. While the Mark II had its own parts book and unique numbering system, they give you a 11-page single lined list of part numbers that cross to standard Ford part numbers. Ford has generic part numbers with suffixes that tell what car that part is labeled for, but other cars use the same part.
Continental was a boutique manufacturer that ran on an early "just in time" format. There was little room to store, or make anything. Everything they did was an assembly job. There was no cutting, stamping, welding, plating of metal parts, but I'll acknowledge that paint was applied and leather cut to fit on other's outside work. The upholstery worker had the most skills. They had to do the two things on-site that gave the cars some degree of individuality. Is that what sets the Mark II above others? Paint and sewing? How many of you have worked a production job? The cars were designed by actual trained designers, that happened to be Ford employees. When the design was approved it went to Ford engineers to be made possible to build. That was Gordon Buehrig's job as Chief Engineer. He actually left before they came to market. They were all Ford engineers that got their approvals from Ford management. Most production cars are built for production expedience, not service, which is so obvious on our cars. However, they are all made to be assembled by the lowest common denominator, the assembly line worker. Having been one, near brain death would have been harder as I had to do he same damn thing until I got good at it, then I did just enough to not get yelled at, and not so good that I got slugged by other employees. Sound familiar? The workers were our fathers uncles and brothers that were hired as a body, nothing more. Things are different today. You need a college degree now to program and operate machinery that is much more sophisticated than back then.
Hand made? There were no robots and sheetmetal wasn't hand-hammered over wood bucks. That's hand made. Using 5 successive dies to form a part from flat stock is stamping, not hand making. Not even made by Ford. They were directed, as a Division, to buy from other Divisions before sourcing a part outside Ford, like the hood ornament, made by a gun sight manufacturer, because Ford's foundries were incapable of fine work.
The men that worked in the plant (women were a distraction and were not even allowed to sew or even be in the plant) were not always the best workers. They were all union workers that vied for their cushy, slow-moving, jobs at Continental by using their seniority to get their positions. Those conditions did not make for the best work force, just the oldest. Problems the plant couldn't fix were simply shipped to the dealer to solve. Assemblers are very different from mechanics. The worst mechanic is a better assembler than they were. You really didn't need much skill, like the skilled trades that built and maintained machinery. As union members they couldn't fire the workers, they had to give them "one more chance", forever.
So, what did the original purchasers get for their money? They got fine finishes. Good leather, good chrome, good paint. That seems to be what set it apart from the market, that and and an extremely heavy dose of Marketing 101, that we've found, didn't really tell the truth about the cars. While the myths, for the most part came from the press, Ford fed the buyers a line that tried to hook the rich buyer by putting fancy clothes on a handmaiden.
Does any of this lessen my love of the marque? Not at all. But, now that I know the truth it explains why these were not a huge success in the marketplace and are not a huge success as far as current values are concerned. What hurts the values more than anything is availability. Too many survived. People knew they were an icon and stashed them, just a few years old. We, as owners, have an obligation to set the record straight. That's all I'm doing.
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