Today we celebrate the last Lincoln coupe, the Mark VIII. Despite recent successes with the 2017 Continental and 2018 Navigator, the odds are that the 1993-1998 Mark VIII is going to be the last. Coupes just don’t sell. Crossovers are now eating even the midsized, mid-price sedan’s lunch. But it was a compelling car. It was the final chapter of a series of luxury coupes and cabriolets dating back to 1939.
1993-94 Mark VIII
The VIII was a technically sophisticated luxury car when new and its statistics are rather impressive even today. Upon its introduction in Autumn 1992, I was an impressionable twelve year old. Sure, I liked Porsche 911s and Corvettes, but even then I had a serious soft spot for domestic luxury cars, thanks to my grandparents’ patronage of premium FoMoCo products since the mid-Sixties.