Late 1960s Goodyear Promotional Piece

The cover and back cover of a well-illustrated and well-written giveaway piece by Goodyear.

M Y   C O L L E C T I O N — This is a small promotional piece published by the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company, most likely in the late 1960s. The backpage has a letter written by O. E. Miles, Executive Vice President, and by a quick Google search, I've found a few letters with his letterhead, and it seems he held that position in 1968 at least. This piece is 9 x 5 1/2 inches, horizontally laid out, stapled in the center and is 24 pages, including front and back covers. It is full 4-color throughout, and each page has handsome illustrations, so evocative of the best "commercial" artists of the day. There is no credit listed for the artist, and no publication date, copyright or litho mark.

I'm guessing my father picked this up at the Goodyear store while having new tires put on one of our cars. My dad was always incredibly supportive of my love of cars and art, and looking through this piece, aimed at the "new teen drivers" of the day, I'm sure he thought I'd like the synthesis of my two loves. I wouldn't drive until 1973, so he didn't pick this up for my driving education, lol. He was always bringing home printed pieces he found for free in everyday life—calendars, ads, books, magazines, etc, for me to look through and perhaps find some inspiration. For birthdays and Christmas, I'd receive nice books on various subjects, but on a daily basis, he always kept his eye out for something free that I'd like. I absolutely adored that about him. Perhaps some of it came from his upbringing in the Depression, and having grown up in 15-16 dysfunctional foster homes before fleeing to the Navy at age 16. He saw the worth in  things other people threw out, but I think a lot of it was just the delight in being able to continually see my eyes light up when he presented me with a new "treasure." He'd hold whatever it was behind his back and have me try to guess what he found that day, lol. I'm more than a little bit my father's son.

A typical interior spread giving tips on how to drive in winter, at night, in rain. Maintenance tips and of course, the value of good tires, is cleverly written into this delightful piece.

A humorous spread describing the stereotypical drivers of the day!

Roses and Ropes and Pearls. Oh, My!

Local businesses have created special scarecrows and holiday decorations for a contest, with entry fees going to a breast cancer charity. Many of their creations also sport a pink ribbon for Breast Cancer Awareness Month. This one, in front of a cool retro gift store, the Nosey Goose, really knocked my necklaces off, lol. While the others around town were well done, and traditional, (and I've featured the "well-dressed" scarecrows in this blog a few days ago), this creation made with roses, pearls, beads, a corded wig, and lace, was just stunning. I really hope they don't take it apart at the end of the week. It deserves a corner of its own inside! 

The pink bicycle is outside of the store all of the time. Usually I wish it had some contrasting colors applied to it, perhaps in stripes or, ahem, plaids, but in this installation, it's a perfect foil for the layered creation in front of it.

So THAT'S Where He Is

Skulking on a nearby roof, Dubya enjoys his retirement. Yes, this scarecrow entry was as creepy as it looks! 'Nuff said!  : )

Road & Track, Fifties Style

September, 1954—From the Contents page cover blurb: With these heady ingredients—a German Porsche Super, a Swedish Hasselblad camera, and a bright California wall—Photographer Rolofson has created a masterful "piece-de-resistance" for our September cover.

November, 1956—From the Contents page cover blurb: Through the bright flowered parks of Turin, home of Italy's great "carozzerias," drive some of the world's most advanced automobiles. Pictured on our November cover is Pinin Farina's "Super-Flow" Alfa Romeo (page 31) with transparent front fenders of plastic.

June, 1958—From the Contents page cover blurb: The French Citroen ID-19 is posed in a Riviera-like setting in California's Pacific Palisades. Adding her charms to the scene is lovely Mme. Colette Garnier, also of Paris. The Ektachrome cover is by Raph Poole.

M Y   C O L L E C T I O N — Perusing a few cartons of old car magazines I've had packed away, I found several years of Road & Track published in the 1950s. Scanned for your viewing pleasure, lol, you'll find issues posted here from 1954, '56 and '58. The covers are so elegantly stark compared with today's over-designed travesties, it's really an eye opener. 

I've designed magazines in the past, fashion magazines for Fairchild Publications in NYC, yachting publications for Embassy publications, and books of all sorts for GPP, Lyons and Falcon, so I feel I'm qualified to call the font-heavy, graphics-heavy, photoshop-filter-heavy covers of today a total mess. They are mostly a tribute to poorly understood software and a need to "one-up" the recent graphics grad sitting next to you, rather than any sort of aesthetic understanding of the subject matter. No matter what publication I worked for in my almost 30 year career, I almost always found that the majority of people in the art department were always working towards the next job, never really understanding their current publication and it's requirements. 

The back pages are just as interesting to me as the front covers. Jaguar frequently bought the back cover of R&T and you'll find two of their full page ads here, a full color studio shot, complete with haute couture and a live feline, and a black-and-white exterior shot using examples of the "typical" Jaguar owner; a handsome airline pilot, a doctor, and various stereotypical well-to-do people, with a chauffeur bringing up the rear. You'll also see an illustrated two-color ad for the then-new Triumph TR-2, an example of an almost simplistically enlarged newspaper ad for the venerable British marque.

For a bit more information on the beyond-fabulous Alfa "Super-Flow" click here. It doesn't seem to have survived to the present day, but there were others in the series that did.

Comet GT Sportwagon, Demon Luxury Coupe, Sketches from 1971. Predictive or Nonstarters?

Recently "unearthed" sketch from 1971 shows a Dodge Demon Luxury Coupé and a Mercury Comet GT Sportwagon. The Demon is almost scarily predictive of the later '70s luxury fad, with its thick vinyl roof and opera windows. With the exception of the rear fender skirts, it's almost an exact match for the '76-'80 Dodge Aspen with its optional roof treatment. My Comet GT Sportwagon proved to be a dead-end. FoMoCo never produced a wagon of their compacts, sport or otherwise, but the concept of a sporty wagon WOULD become viable in later years by many manufacturers. My roofline was almost the same as the later Toyota Corolla SR5. It was also similar to the then-current Volvo 1800ES, which might be where I got the idea from.

Late '70s Aspen with its optional padded vinyl roof and opera windows, at least five years after my drawing above. (Google Images)

Late '70s Corolla SR-5 sportwagon. I wouldn't mind one of these today in mint condition. (Google Images)

Classic Volvo 1800ES sportwagon. I would love to have one of these also, lol.

UPDATE: Very loyal reader, PhantomX, reminded me that if I had used the Maverick front clip, my drawing would have looked quite a bit like the Pinto wagon that came out in '72.  It might not have had the 'sportwagon' moniker, but it was a 2 door wagon with bucket seats and a 4 speed manual transmission standard...

My VW Beetle Replacement, ca 1973

Back in the early 1970s, there was a lot of talk about possible VW Beetle replacements. Of course, Giugiaro would be tapped to create the eventual successor, the absolutely brilliant front-engined, front wheel drive Golf (Rabbit to the USA), but I was thinking more along the lines of an updated rear-engined car. To that end, I created this "211" when I was about 15-16 years old, doodles on an old piece of onionskin paper. The "luxury" 411 had been recently introduced in the States, so I dubbed this small VW the 211. Note that I even thought about shock absorber placement, lol. I gave it 4 wheel disc brakes, horribly proportioned tires, and a sporty profile, not at all retro, or even related to the Beetle. At least I got that part right, the Golf looked forward 100% and never looked back. Until the New Beetle of the '90s of course.

Ford's Fine Feathered Friends—1969 Style

Ford's Luxury Bird—These scans are from "Ford Times" October 1968 issue, a small monthly periodical published by FoMoCo until 1993. The magazine measured 5 x 7 inches and consisted of 64 glossy pages and a heavier stock front and rear cover with a stapled binding. In addition to the requisite promotional pages for FoMoCo, editorial content included illustrated articles on the Talimena Scenic Drive in Oklahoma and Arkansas, bird watching, wood carving, a story on the Great Salt Lake in Utah and recipes from famous restaurants. 

Above, the 2 page Thunderbird piece. The first page shows the new for '69 blind rear C pillar, strongly evocative of the '66 Tbird Town Coupe and Landau, and which would be repeated in the '71 model year. The reason for Ford to use this coupe roof style only in '66, '69 and '71 is something I'd love to know! Please notice the "plain" coupe on the top of the second page, has a strange C pillar and quarter window. I'm not sure if it was an overzealous airbrushing graphic artist, or if Ford had contemplated a change to the '67-'69 roofline, released these early photos and then rescinded the facelift, but I suspect it's the first. I'd like a Landau 4 door in maroon with black interior and vinyl roof.

Ford's Economy Bird—Also in the October 1968 issue, is this '69 Falcon, in Futura coupe and 4 door versions. This would prove to be the Falcon's last year as a compact, with the new Maverick in the wings, due to be introduced on April 17th, 1969. In 1970, the Falcon was, for a brief time, the lowest rung of the Torino lineup, appearing as a pillared coupe only. I always liked this second generation Falcon, in showrooms for model years '66 through this '69. They were based on a shortened Fairlane platform, and even shared the wagon bodystyle and wheelbase with its larger brother. I'll take a black Futura coupe with a black vinyl roof, 302 V8, power steering and brakes and SelectShift automatic transmission! 

At the bottom right is Ford's new-for '69 Country Squire, with its innovative 3-way "Magic" doorgate and newly hidden headlights, which had been used in '68 as well. Thanks to loyal reader, Paul, for the correction! I love the '68 full sized Fords, and can't believe I forgot the XLs, LTDs and Country Squires came with hidden headlights! But that's why I love my readers, too. : ) 

The Pentagon in All it's [Morning] Glory

An extremely angular morning glory was blooming this morning. It's also several shades lighter than any of the others. It has truly been a year of singularly odd flowers in my gardens!  Regular readers of this blog will remember my "Fraternal Triplets," the magenta-and-white dahlias that kept changing their patterns.

As a reminder, the "usual" morning glories in my garden.

Autumn Afternoon Artandcolour

These autumn asters were so vivid, they completely overwhelmed my little digital camera, adding magentas and blues where none existed. In every shot! Thanks to Photoshop, I was able to render them somewhat more realistically. I had a huge bush of these at my mother's house, but so far I haven't scored any for Pink Gardens. All photos clickable to see at full size.

I've only seen a couple of trees changing so far, but it won't be long now.

A different angle of the asters above. I just like the juxtaposition of the purple asters and the orange leaves in this blog column, lol.

A nice detailed view of the colors on this tree. I really like the green that stays along the "veins" of the leaves. It contrasts so well with the autumn reds, oranges and yellow.

Montauk Daisies. This group of perennials was at least 4 feet wide and 3 feet high. Just gorgeous. 

One of my cosmos was leaning over this morning. Before I staked it up, I took some nice photos of it low down.

A long view of the golf course at the country club. A lot of people were playing today, I'd say it was full. You can see that most trees are barely beginning to color. Long Island Sound is about 1/8 mile to the back of me as I was taking this photo, which keeps the temperatures temperate in the immediate area. When most of Connecticut sees snow or ice, we usually get slush. The same in the summer—when the rest of the state has high temps and humidity, we tend to be cooler with more breezes near the water, not to say that we don't get heat waves, lol. Except for my short time in West Hollywood, I've never lived more than 1/2 mile from a major body of water.

Gridlock!

The madding crowd lines up to get into one of my impromptu art shows at home. How many cars can YOU identify, lol?

I, Violet. I, Daisy. Original Hilton Sisters Homage

I, Violet. I, Daisy. Painting on two joined pine boards, 16 x 18 inches. Click on image to see the details, varying from the woodgrain itself to almost fabric-like portions.

M Y   A R T — This painting is an homage to Violet and Daisy Hilton, the conjoined twins made famous in the 1930s. They appeared in the cult-classic film, Freaks, and they had a long career singing and dancing in Vaudeville and the legitimate sideshows so popular back then. They even tap danced in a Vaudeville act headed up by Bob Hope. They always referred to themselves as "I, Violet" or "I, Daisy." They each led quite a life, really overcoming their differences from other entertainers. They dyed their hair different colors, had different "suitors" and generally made the best of their lives, as we all hope we can do. 

The sisters were featured in a book I designed years ago, Shocked and Amazed, On and Off the Midway, by James Taylor and Kathleen Kotcher. if you click over to Amazon with this link, make sure you then click on "Look Inside." You'll see the final cover and several interior pages of this black and white book. For some reason, the cover shown on the first Amazon link is an earlier version that didn't make the cut.

My thoughts behind my piece of art are very simple. Violet and Daisy both felt trapped in their attached bodies. They adored each other, but felt boxed in. They loved fine clothes, fine surroundings, but often found themselves on the seedier sides of towns they visited on tour. I painted the flowers in squares, a pseudo polaroid for Violet, and three repetitive boxes for Daisy. They each have their own pine board, but the 2 pieces of wood are joined together. There is a lot of finely detailed painting, dots, stripes, repeated patterns, almost fabric like in places, but much of it appears worn. They couldn't hide their perceived "flaws" and neither can this piece—I left the knots in the wood clearly visible and there is much of the grain of the wood to be seen as well. The colors are similar on each board, but not exact matches, and I was careful to make sure none of the stripes actually cross from one board to another. They valued highly their differences, as most people tended to only see their similarities. I'm proud to say this piece hangs in my friend Mary's home today.

For more on these fabulous sisters, the original Hilton sisters, click over to this link at Wiki.

I'll Paint Anything!

This is a post from May 11, before anyone had really found my blog. I'm going to repost earlier entries occasionally this fall, in a sort of Golden Oldies reprise.

Follow the Yellow Brick Road, or stop and smell the flowers on this painted record player. Click to see in greater detail.

O N   A   W O O D E N   C A B I N E T — This is an inexpensive record player I bought several years ago from a discount store. I was looking for a new record player so I could listen to old vinyl—I have quite a collection of 33s, 45s and the much older 78s. The player is constructed out of 'fake' wood, that composite material made from wood chips and dust glued together, lol, or however they create it. It came with a blondish wood tone and painted palm trees, lol. I've painted the entire case a nice dark green with some gold leaf trim, but for the top, I created this 'impressionistic' painting, Follow the Yellow Brick Road. Alongside the road are all sorts of flowers from Oz. The first record I played on it was Somewhere Over the Rainbow by Judy Garland, Of course.

MorningColour

Bright magenta and orange Zinnias contrast with the Sixties lavender marbled ceramic vase. One of Plymouth's last concept cars, the Pronto Spyder n 1:24 scale sits alongside a1:43  '67 Shelby GT350 and three Matchbox size VWs.

This is a striped vase I've painted with flowers all the way around it. It's a composite material, and those black and white stripes are actually grooves in the vase, giving it a great texture to look at and to touch. There is a little brownish-gray mouse visible from this side at the bottom. Next to the vase is the tail-end of my early 20th century horse-drawn Borden's milk wagon. I love the colors on the vintage tin and wood toy, and use variations of them in many of my pieces of art. The wagon is always on a shelf in whatever room I'm working in, so I can be inspired by it.

Red Sky at Night, Sailor's Delight

Night falls in Connecticut. The view outside of my guest room tonight around 7 pm. My mother used to call evening clouds like this "sky blue pink," as if it were one word. And I learned the poem, of course, from my Dad, a Navy sailor from 1938-50 (and an Army Master Sergeant from 1950-60).

Red sky at night,

Sailor's delight.

Red sky in the morning,

Sailor's take warning.

Smooth sailing tonight, everyone!

The Well-Dressed Scarecrow

Riding into town today, the local Rotary Club had just put the finishing touches on this holiday display on an empty lot right near the town center. The colors drew my eye, I've always loved striped stockings, but when I got up close I realized that most of the clothes are brand new. There are hastily sewn-on patches, but the scarves, yellow overalls and the rest of the clothes are brand new from the local boutiques I s'pose. Goddess forbid we have dressed-down scarecrows in our dressed-to-the-nines town!

U P D A T E :  Apparently there is a contest in town, as many local businesses have done their best to create interesting and creative displays. The proceeds from the entry fees go to a local breast cancer charity in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Many of the displays feature a pink ribbon for that reason.

"To the Moon, Alice!" Spaceships in the Kitchen?

When the Future Was in the Stars

M Y   C O L L E C T I O N — Buying a Rocketship to Saturn? Nope, behold a sales piece for a series of, drum roll please, gas ranges for your kitchen. Yes, this very mid-century futuristic rocketship, blasting our of the atmosphere on the way to the planet Saturn in the background, is the cover for a promotional piece for Suburban Hardwick gas ovens. The piece folds out to 8 sheets this size, with the cover cleverly folding over the inner 7 to "lock" them in place. I believe this came with my grandmother's stove, one of the ones pictured inside is exactly the same as the one in her kitchen when I was growing up. By the way, the ovens pictured inside were absolutely normal in design and appearance. This rocketship theme extended only so far as the cover, and a few strategically placed pale blue stars superimposed over each oven's description.

I'm a HUGE fan of Mid-Century Modern, the term for industrial design/architecture/furniture produced from the late Thirties through the the mid Sixties. This cover design, which I believe was produced in 1957, is an excellent example. It pointed to an optimistic future, one that had nowhere to go but up. The collective feeling was one of exhuberance, especially after the Second World War. We were racing to space. we were never going to fight another war, we were moving to the suburbs, enjoying the good life after years of going without. Designers of all sorts had free rein to create "far out" products and merchandizing pieces. The late Fifties fabulous finned wonders from Detroit were perfect examples. I think we could use a bit of this group-think optimism in this world today.

• For a bit of humor, here's the opening theme to the Jetsons, with a bit of a twist thanks to Seth McFarlane of Family Guy.

• For a trip down Memory Lane, this 10-minute clip of The Honeymooners.

"Ding Dong, Avon Calling!" In the 1960s.

Avon has sold "collector" bottles of its colognes for decades, many of them in the shape of cars. I have eight of these various bottles, three still in the box as is this '55 Thunderbird. All of them still contain the cologne in them. Believe it or not, this Thunderbird "Wild Country" cologne smells really good, and I have to stop myself from wearing it regularly. I don't want to deplete it! Some of the others include an old touring car, complete with a plastic roof windshield and pillars, two '53 Buick Skylarks and an E-Type Jaguar among others. I think it's the Jag whose aroma has gone "off," just smelling like old alcohol, but the others are still pretty fresh. I'm not positive of the production date of this Avon Tbird, but the box includes an address with a Zip Code, so it's not any older than 1963. You can see in the photo, the tail end of the car is plastic, not glass. It comes off revealing the screw top cap of the bottle. The box is 5 1/2 inches long. 

In researching for this post, to find a production date, I found a couple of these for sale at eBay and Etsy, but no production dates. The eBay item was unopened, but the Etsy piece was just the empty bottle. Don't worry folks, neither of them are mine, you know I don't sell anything except my art!

The description of the original 1955 2 seater Thunderbird is remarkably complete, right down to the use of the 292 V8 Mercury engine in that first year personal luxury coupe. Click on it to read for yourself. For some reason, I don't see a company going to the trouble of actually researching this information today for their boxes. Or, it would be wrong, lol.

Another view of the Tbird bottle, showing the plastic rear end covering the screw top.

Seeing the Light of Day Again

1905 photograph of my grandmother and her oldest step brother and sister. I've placed it in a vintage basket, hanging from a rafter in the attic.

Extremely pedestrian acrylic painting of an Ivy plant wrapped in red foil, on the ground next to our house, painted in 1973 when I was a sophomore in high school. No wonder I didn't remember it at all until I found it last week, packed away in an old art attaché that has moved with me several times but hadn't been opened since the '80s at the latest.

Some scale model car kits I've collected. Some were bought just 5-6 years ago, but many of them date back to the 70s and 80s. There is a Deora kit in the upper right, a custom pickup I believe has been mentioned in the blog in the past. In the foreground is Hoohoo's silver clarinet from the 1930s in its original case. For some reason, there were colonial feather quill pens in the case with it. Whatever the reason they were placed in there, it worked. They're still in perfect condition. Click on the image to see the car kits in greater detail.

"My Jihad." My Most Well-Known Book, 2002

Photographed on a wooden background, this is the cover of a book I designed that really hit the big time back in 2002, My Jihad, by Aukai Collins.

M Y   B O O K   D E S I G N S — This book was a crash book, meaning that the time frame from finished manuscript to print date was a matter of days, not weeks or months. The text was late, the original cover, in my opinion, didn't really work with the searing and biting and frankly, bloody text. I know it had to be designed way before the book was actually finished, so the original designer just didn't have enough information. The author actually had to come to Guilford and put on a "lockdown" to finish the text, lol, and once it was done the book MOVED through all the paces at breakneck speed. I worked with the editor on a minute-by-minute basis, accessing dark, desperate and obscure European, Middle Eastern and Russian websites to find the images to build the 8-page color well photo section. These included photos of Chechen "rebels" who were in fact merely injured children. We found hospital photos of people counted by the outside world as terrorists, when they were actually blind, handicapped and homeless senior citizens. We found images of rockets being launched and Mujahideen dead and dying in a winter of hell.

The original cover was pinkish with a passport type image and motif. I didn't like the fonts, sort of an Arabic-looking one for the title. With a serious book like this, classic serif and sans serif fonts were really called for in my old opinion. My only "real" job on this book was the interior and color well, but I did a bad thing and redesigned the cover on my own at the very last minute. In a very poor political move, lol, I skipped two layers of managers and submitted my cover at about 11pm  to the publisher. He was awake, we went back and forth on some subtle changes, and by 3am the new cover was set. By 8am the next day everyone found out. Then we had to pull back files, "inform" the managers, redo working files of PR pieces, etc.  My doghouse for the next six months was tight and very well guarded, lol! I would do it again in an instant, though. I've never doubted any of my work decisions, and never really thought about things like office politics, time involved, etc. The job needs to be as perfect as possible and if it takes 40 hours to do a very low-budget project and you know the majority of your work is free, so be it. No possible book buyer knows about the budget when they see the book. All they see is your work and just like my fine art, I don't have a low-dollar look and a well-funded look. They all just look as good as I can make them.

The Cover

I chose a photo of the author to get those piercing, and steely, blue eyes. I used a cut of Garamond and Helvetica typefaces, the two classic fonts I use in most of my books, and I Photoshopped a second photo of the author and a buddy in the Middle East on the bottom of the cover. The author had lost a leg in a fierce firefight, had a prosthetic fitted and went back to war within a few weeks. I thought it was important to get that image on the cover—you can see his prosthetic leg silhouetted on the bottom. His eyes told ME the whole story—after all this is a book of his remembrances of his time in the Bin Laden training camps and of his subsequent "conversion" by the FBI and the CIA. 

The book went on to be covered on every major TV network news shows and all of the cables, CNN, Fox and I believe MSNBC. I saw my cover on seven or eight news shows. The author and the editor were on TV. Ann Coulter was side-by-side with the author on one show, scrawny far-right witch that she is, totally dissing the book and the writer, and Aukai is a scary dude! The book sold well, got so-so reviews for the writing, but was really well-known. I was proud, and totally gratified that once again, I had trusted my gut and had done the new cover when everyone had said not to. But, for some reason, we sold the rights to the paperback and the movie rights almost immediately. The paperback was redesigned by the new publisher and I never heard of it again, lol. The movie was never made. My third or fourth fifteen minutes of fame were over.

From Publisher's Weekly:

Collins, a former mujahid and Phoenix-based FBI informant, has recently been in the news for allegedly having warned the FBI to no avail about one of the September 11 hijackers. Here he focuses mostly on his experiences fighting along with an associate of Bin Laden's in Chechnya, as well as his bitter misadventures with the FBI. (Subtitle notwithstanding, he worked primarily for the FBI but did some joint missions with the CIA.) Collins, 28, converted to Islam while serving time as a teenager in a California prison for attempted robbery. After his release, he decided to make jihad in Bosnia in the early 1990s, and thus began an odyssey with the mujahideen that took him to training camps in Kashmir and Afghanistan and to the front lines in Chechnya. He became disillusioned, however, when some extremist factions began terrorizing civilians, and decided he could best preserve the sanctity of jihad by helping Americans rout the true terrorists. But his FBI gig wasn't much more fulfilling; Collins scathingly critiques what he casts as the Bureau's willful ignorance (they didn't understand, for instance, that mosques were the wrong places to look for extremists), their self-defeating rules (he was not allowed to go undercover to a camp actually run by Bin Laden himself) and their general bureaucratic bumbling. The book doesn't offer much historical or political background, but Collins is a vivid raconteur and his accounts of illegal border-crossings in lawless Afghanistan and Dagestan are as gripping as the descriptions of actual battles. His firsthand view of the FBI, though clearly one-sided, should interest readers as well.

Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

The Wiki on the author, here.

The Amazon link, here.

New Lincoln Flagship Based on MKT?

A U T O M O T I V E   N E W S — The word on the street, well actually on the electronic highway anyway, is that Lincoln is preparing a new flagship, perhaps based on the MKT. Jalopnik's story here. Autoblog is also reporting this story. SOMEONE in Detroit may actually be watching my chops, lol. I've been "working" on new Lincoln flagships for quite awhile. I've posted these fantasy Lincolns in this blog before, but to jog your memories here they are again.

With thanks to a friend for alerting me to the Jalopnik piece! All images clickable thumbnails for greater detail. Click on "Lincolns" in the Label list on the right of this blog to see all of my Lincoln creations.

My MKT-based Mark Coupe, a flagship 2 door luxury car, in the tradition of  the Mark I-VIII. This would be a long wheelbase, all-wheel drive coupe.

An MKL, a luxury sedan based on the MKT concept vehicle.

My Town Car, based on the MKT design language. The C pillar features a vertical "opera window" in the manner of the '80s and '90s Town Car. The gentle rise in the beltline is similar to the '70-'71 Lincoln Continentals.

This Town Car, uses the same white MKT EcoBoost model as above, but is a bit more traditional with a "sixth window" following the regular greenhouse shape. I lengthened the trunk quite a bit to give it that old-school sedan look, pushed the front wheels forward and sectioned the body to take some height out of it.

Completely off the wall, but one of my favorite chops, is this Mark Coupe based on the Aston Martin Lagonda concept crossover. This coupe would feature an ultra luxurious Recaro bucket seat interior for four, and all wheel drive.