Adam Wade of Rare Classic Cars & Automotive History (2025) recently compared the Lincoln Continental Mark III and the first-generation Cadillac Eldorado. Although the Mark III had a much simpler and more derivative design, Wade still preferred the Lincoln because of the interior’s quality and overall fit and finish.
This strikes me as a reasonable assessment that may very well have reflected the views of many luxury personal coupe buyers back in the day. As we have previously discussed, the Mark III and its successors were breakthrough cars for the Ford Motor Company because they were the first postwar Lincolns that challenged Cadillac for sales supremacy.
This underlines a fascinating paradox: Even though the exterior styling of the 1967-70 Eldorado has arguably withstood the test of time better than the Mark III, it represented the beginning of Cadillac’s descent from utterly dominating the U.S. luxury car field. And while we can criticize the Mark series for its rather crass cribbing of Rolls Royce styling cues, it arguably did do “brougham” better than either the first- or second-generation Eldorado.
Wade does a good job of walking us through the design features of a 1971 Mark III and a 1969 Eldorado. In general, he strikes me as being among the more analytically sophisticated producers of auto history videos. I could say that he is well worth following, but his YouTube channel (go here) has far more followers than Indie Auto, so perhaps it’s most appropriate to tip my hat with respect.
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RE:SOURCES
- Wade, Adam; 2025. “1971 Lincoln Continental Mark III: Green with Envy!” Rare Classic Cars & Automotive History. Posted Jan. 29.
Original, mint examples of each car have appeared at various local car shows. The Continental Mark III sports a very high level of fit-and-finish, both inside and out. The Eldorados are well-made, but the interior looks as though it was lifted from a high-end Chevrolet. There is nothing “special” or particularly plush about it. The Continental Mark III interior does look like something special.
The Eldorado had better handling, but the brakes were problematic. Testers complained about this regularly. It’s interesting that Cadillac didn’t make discs standard until the 1968 model year – and there isn’t any mention of this in the Cadillac brochures for that year. The Continental Mark III had disc brakes standard from day one.
This is purely anecdotal evidence, but I remember as a boy that seeing a new Continental Mark III was noteworthy. They really did leave an impression. The Eldorado just didn’t have the same impact. I still remember when Hot Wheels came out with a miniature Mark III, and I immediately begged my parents to buy one.
Lincolns in general were rare, and thus seemed more special – perhaps this was one way that Lincoln’s lower total sales benefited the marque. Note that Imperials were much less common than either Lincolns or Cadillacs, but they didn’t have the same impact.
I agree with Geeber. In our small city of 18,000, l don’t remember any Eldos. But my Saturday job in high school was washing cars and pumping gas at our Sunoco station all day. l DO remember a MKIII coming for a wash regularly and l got to drive it just a bit. Nice car. Brown and brown – on brown!
The brake situation on the Eldo was unforgivable! Makes you wonder how it could have made it into production! Definitely nice looking with the modern chiselled lines. but the next gen lost any admiration from me.
The Eldo should have had the disc brakes as standard BUT what was the take rate of the option in the years it was not standard?