If you really stretch things you could easily say the Lincoln Continental is one of the oldest car nameplates on the planet. It was born back in the 1930s as a personal request from Edsel Ford and it crawled on, with interruptions, ever since. The Continental nameplate was only discontinued by the American carmaker in 2020, as it decided the only kind of vehicles it would be making from that point on are SUVs.
The Continental had quite a rough ride during its existence, moving in and out of production repeatedly. Yet, even if the name is no longer here today in new form, the Continental still lives on, not in small part thanks to the many custom versions of it that pop up.
Over the decades the Continental burned through ten generations, but few of them are as appreciated by the custom industry as the fourth one, which ran from 1961 to 1969. It’s that generation this here metallic silver bad boy belongs to, and it’s expected to rock an auction in California at the end of the week.
The car is the result of custom work performed on a 1964 Continental by a Cali-based shop called No End Customs. It’s unclear when exactly the build was completed (we’re told “recently”) and how many miles are on it, but just a quick look at the thing will reveal it shines as if it were new.
A convertible by trade, the car’s cold-looking body was not significantly modified from stock, but it was gifted with modern touches up front, in the form of LED headlights. It also looks a lot more aggressive than before after being dropped closer to the ground by means of a custom suspension system.
Supporting the body on the ground are Raceline Manhattan wheels, sized 20 inches on all four corners and shod in low-profile tires. Moving to the highest point of the car, that’s where a remote-controlled tan convertible top is fitted.
The reverse-hinged doors of the Continental open to reveal a classy interior in white, boasting Dakota Digital gauges, a two-tone steering wheel, and a Bluetooth sound system that runs amplifiers and a subwoofer.
Originally, fourth-gen Continentals were powered by huge engines (three choices, all of them over 7 liters in displacement), but that’s not what this thing hides under the hood. In fact, it doesn’t even have a Ford-sourced engine, but a GM LS 6.0 liters large. It’s unclear how much power it develops, but we do know all of it is controlled through an automatic transmission and sent to a Ford 9-inch rear.
The 1964 Lincoln Continental in this guise, looking like some kind of ride for the gangsta everybody likes, is going under the Mecum hammer in Monterey California at the end of this week. The auction house estimates it could get as much as $250,000 for it, and that’s a fortune no matter how you look at it.
