JP’s A to Z Challenge Finale- Z is for Zephyr

No, not the Mercury Zephyr some of you remember from the late 1970’s into the early 1980’s, but the one before that – the pre-war Lincoln Zephyr. Today, I present this forlorn example from 1939, which was midway though the model’s 7-year run of 1936-42.

The photos I have used thus far in this series have all been from the last several years. The innovation of digital photography has allowed me to photograph cool old cars to my heart’s content. Which is the cheapest and easiest way to participate in the old car hobby. Trust me, I have tried the other way and it is a lot more work and a whole lot more expensive! Today I am going back to some of the first photos I took just as I was falling head over heels in love with old cars.

Over Labor Day weekend of 1973, my best friend Dan invited me to go with his family to the annual festival in Auburn, Indiana, which celebrated the heritage of Auburn, Cord and Duesenberg cars. Those cars, some of the most beautiful and exclusive of the late 1920’s and into the mid 1930’s, were the focus of the event, but a local auction company came up with a side-hustle – a classic car auction. We drove past the outside of the auction but did not go in.

I went back with Dan and his father the following year and took my camera. This was the first time I found myself awash in cool old cars. These were not just moving past me in a parade or sitting in a museum behind ropes. Nope, I could walk up right up to these and soak up every detail. Looking at my photos from that 1974 weekend, it is clear that I was not wowed so much with the high-dollar classic stuff, but the old cars I had never seen anywhere else.

Like this 1939 Lincoln Zephyr 3-window coupe. Film and processing were expensive, so I erred on the side of getting as many cars as I could, to the exclusion of drilling down into the sublime detail shots that I love so much now. So we will have to augment my own single photo with some other material.

Advertisement for the “real” Lincoln of the late 1930’s. Uncompromising quality, stratospheric cost and circling the drain in sales numbers.

Lincoln’s business was going downhill fast during the Great Depression because few were willing to turn loose of their money to buy the company’s magnificent cars. It was decided that Lincoln needed to move down into the medium price field with a volume-built car if the lights were to stay on in Lincoln’s offices. Lincoln’s engineers designed a modern car with unit body construction and streamlined it. For an engine, they started with Henry Ford’s famous V8 engine design and enlarged it into a V-12 (accidentally proving that some things scale up better than others). It was not just the engine – there turned out to be a lot of Ford DNA in the Lincoln Zephyr.

The Lincoln Zephyr was an immediate hit when it came out as a 1936 model. At least a hit by Lincoln standards. Who wouldn’t want a 12 cylinder Lincoln for the price of an 8 cylinder Buick? And until the Mercury came along three years later, it was the only car besides the basic Ford that the company built in volume.

I was drawn to this car because I had never seen one before, even in a picture. I still sometimes wonder what ever happened to it. Did someone buy it in 1974 and then treat it to a restoration? If so, it might look something like this photo I found online. Or did it get pushed into someone’s barn to molder until it got turned into scrap by some impatient heir. Has it been over 50 years already? As I think about it, this old Lincoln Zephyr was only 35 years old in 1974, like a well-worn 1990 model today. Yikes.

This was the car owned by Dan’s father, a gorgeuous low-mile all-original car. I never made a grander entrance to school than the beautiful spring day in 1973 or 74 when he agreed to drive us to school in it.

There is one other reason I snapped a shot of this Zephyr, which was in by far the worst condition of anything I captured on that cloudy day. My friend Dan’s father owned a 1947 Lincoln sedan that captivated me as probably the first really old car I had been able to get up close to. Lincoln dropped the Zephyr name after the war-abbreviated 1942 model year. The 1946-48 Lincolns were minimally changed from those newly-restyled 42s (right down to the troublesome V-12 engines) and were Zephyrs in all but name. I fell in love with that Lincoln and, by extension, those older models that were related to it.

We have now reached the end of my 26 week alphabetical challenge that took us from AMX to Zephyr. I have had tremendous fun sharing some of my old car photos, but this has also been a lot of extra work on top of my regular once-weekly blog schedule. Maybe we will do this again some time because, if I can get get Q under contol, I can easily manage at least one more round. But for now, I think I am going to rest so that we can return to our regularly scheduled blogging.

Lede photo by the author

Lincoln Zephyr badge photo from the Pinterest page of Mike Early

Photo of the restored car was from an auction listing and advertising photos found at random sites on the internet.

26 thoughts on “JP’s A to Z Challenge Finale- Z is for Zephyr”

  1. Beautiful lines on these! For some reason, when it comes to American luxury, I’ve always been more of a Lincoln fan than Cadillac. When I was renting cars for corporate use, it was always the Lincoln Town Car for me. I’d like to see them get back to some of these design lines and away from the weird luxury RV look.

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    • Agreed! My father had 6 of them (I think) when he could afford them, ranging from 1970 until he died in 2001. I think he admired the early Continentals of the 40s from his youth.

      Lincoln has had a maddening history. They finally came into their own in the 60s and 70s, and did pretty well in the 80s-90s, but have faltered ever since.

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      • Indeed.
        When I was growing up, it was that oddball middle-of-the line brand between the Fords and Lincolns that just never made sense. When the price went up but all you could really see different was a handful of buttons or a dash clock…

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  4. I knew I could expect more from you than the car with a Z (Zed) in its name from Chevrolet. Maybe next time through the order, it might be the one that Datsun made. Guy down the street from me has one of those.

    So I saw the title of this post in my email, and almost skipped it over thinking it would be one of those Fairmont like cars from the 80s. You outdid yourself with this memory from 1974. Great post.

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    • Thanks, Lee. Several of my photos are some that I’ve forgotten about, but this one came to mind as soon as I thought of this project. With all the old car shows I’ve been to, I’m amazed I have never snapped another Zephyr.

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  6. I hope that Zephyr was restored. That photo is a reminder of the time when the old car hobby centered on Auburn-Cord-Duesenberg vehicles (high end) and the prewar Ford vehicles (for the average person).

    Both Edsel Ford and Bob Gregorie, his chief stylist, loved yachts and sailing. Prewar Ford vehicles have a light, graceful look as a result. They were a definite contrast to the heavier, more fulsome designs favored by GM’s Harley Earl.

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  7. JP I’m curious about that ad from the 1930’s…..it looks like the chauffeur/driver part in the front is open like a convertible, but the passenger/sedan part is covered? Did such a car exist or was part of the roof retractable?

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    • That body style was called a Town Car, and featured posh interior quarters for the rich owners while the chauffer sat out in the open, sort of mimicking the old carriages. Most of them that I have seen provided a snap-on fabric roof section for the chauffer, and possibly snap-on side curtains too, but the poor chauffer certainly did not share in the opulence. These were relatively common in ultra-high end cars of the 1920’s and early 1930’s. They certainly told the world that you had money to burn.

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  8. This has been an awesome ride. You know, in olden times the alphabet included the ampersand…

    Thanks for doing this. I am curious, not knowing anything about cars, what was wrong with the 12-cylinder? It seems like it should have been ultra-high powered.

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    • It was a small V-12, 292 cubic inches, and it was designed more for smoothness and quiet than for power or speed. The Ford V8 had some design compromises to keep its costs down, and one was that exhaust gas was pumped through the block to get to the pipes outside, and resulted in an engine that tended to run quite hot. Adding 4 cylinders made that worse. Also, these struggled to keep oil circulating at low rpms. The bottom line is that it was a great engine if you were a traveling salesman who kept the revs up and who kept lots of air going through the radiator. For the rest of the drivers, these tended to develop sludge in the oiling passages and it was not uncommon to require an overhaul at 30 or 40,000 miles.

      The original Lincoln Continental of the 1940’s was essentially a lowered and customized Zephyr, and was always a stylish and sought-after car. However, it was always common to see them with later model V8 engines swapped in to replace an original V-12 that had failed.

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  9. This has been a fun excursion, but has it ever been quick! You’ve got some really good ones along the way, plus some difficult ones (there is overlap between those two!).

    Thanks for tackling this as it could not have been easy.

    Perhaps now (after sufficient recovery) you could do an A to Z of candies. Or jazz singers. Or car colors.

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    • I have amazed myself at how many cars I have photographed through the years that I never wrote up over at CC. Some of them still deserve a full treatment there, and perhaps some day I will get there.

      I could see coming back for another round, perhaps next year. The candy A to Z could be interesting. I could follow it up with A to Z diets. Or maybe A to Z descriptors for a long rest? I should start at the end and go backwards – like this: Z is for Zzzzzzzzzzz. 🙂

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  10. Man, I’ll bet that ride to school in the 1970s was something you’ll never forget. I got the very occasional ride to school from my dad (only when I missed the bus), but his cars were thoroughly nondescript. Love the Zephyr’s giant headlights and other distinctive features. Definitely a “hey, look at me” car of its time.

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