“I had inherited the ’57 Lincoln from Bill Schmidt who had put these gargantuan fins on this ’57 job, and he took his beautiful ’56 Lincoln creation and put these God-awful fins from the Futura on it. . . (go here for photos).
All fins and gorkiness. Oldsmobile, or Buick, had five bars of chrome running along its quarter panel, and somebody went along and put musical notes on them. And, I think, Oldsmobile had an oval mouth and somebody put rolled eyes on the headlights and a tongue hanging out. We were all guilty.
So, anyhow, I looked at this 1957 Lincoln and said, ‘My God, I don’t like this. What can I do?’ So I talked to Elwood (Engel), and I shortened the wrap-around chrome below the rear fins by about two feet. Just had them tucked in from the back. I brought down the top fins by about 7-8 inches, and tried to clean it up from my point of view.”
— John Najjar, Lincoln Chief Stylist 1955-57 (Crippen and Bakken, 1984)
RE:SOURCES
- Crippen, David R. and Douglas A. Bakken; 1984. “The Reminiscences of John Najjar.” Automotive Design Oral History Project, Automobile in American Life and Society.
Also see ‘The 1956 Lincoln’s styling proved to be a one-year wonder’
I respect John Najjar’s perspective on the 1957 Lincoln, even if he created the Gawd-awful 1958-1960 Lincoln and its retractable-windowed Continentals Mark III-through-V …but Ford was really going through a rough patch with its styling after the 1957 Fords. Was George Walker to blame ? I think so, given the 1958 Fords and the 1957-1958 Big Ms and those big ugly and massive bumpers. (After all, there is a tendency to blame all of Chrysler’s problems after 1957 on Virgil Exner, Sr.) The 1955 Futura was a much better concept for the 1960s to give a design detail generator than anything G.M. had offered after the 1953 Motorama year !
In doing some additional research on the 1955 Lincoln Futura concept car, the origin of the Futura inspiration was co-designer Bill Schmidt’s diving encounter with a shark, (a creature that would similarly inspire G.M.’s Bill Mitchell in the late 1950s concerning Corvette design). Yes, John Najjar was the Futura’s co-designer, but the white pearl on the Ghia concept was Schmidt’s doing, as Schmidt wanted a show-stopping paint that would excite the masses. The Futura was unveiled to the press on January 5th, 1955 at the Chicago Auto Show, which means that the car was really designed in 1953-1954. Because the pearl white did not photograph well for the movie cameras in 1959, the car was painted red for the Debbie Reynolds-Glenn Ford flick “It Started With a Kiss”. As a teenager, I owned the Revell model kit of the Futura in the 1960s. Of course, in the mid-1960s, Ford allegedly sold the Futura (which was a fully operational vehicle with its 368-cu.-in. Lincoln and TurboDrive automatic on a prototype 1956-1957 Mark II frame) to George Barris for one-dollar ! The Futura may have been one of the most successful “out-there” concept vehicles of all time, especially since it had a second life as the TV 1966 “Batmobile”, which still is an attraction at fan-shows 58-years later !