Lincoln Continental Coach Door

Scope of this guide

This guide is scoped to the 2019 Lincoln Continental 80th Anniversary Coach Door Edition, the limited run of 80 four-door saloons with rear-hinged doors that Lincoln had converted by Cabot Coach Builders from Black Label Continentals with the 3.0L twin-turbo V6 and all-wheel drive. It is not a guide to the standard Continental of 2017 to 2020, to the 2020 model year Coach Door Edition that followed it (a second, larger run covered below), or to the much older Continentals that also had rear-hinged doors, which we mention only as background and did not research. Where those cars differ we say so, because an advert that says only "Coach Door" can describe either the 2019 or the 2020 cars.

We have not driven this model for this article. Everything here comes from three cited sources: Lincoln's own ownership page for the Coach Door Edition on lincoln.com, a PistonHeads forum thread from October 2019, and the government recall checker. We also read, through page summaries rather than in full, reports from Slashgear (17 December 2018), The Drive (21 January 2019 and 4 October 2019), Autoblog (4 October 2019), Fox News (October 2019), Yahoo Autos, a spec table on carsart.net and Wikipedia's Lincoln Continental article, and we flag each point that rests on them. Where sources disagree we say so rather than pick a winner quietly. Prices are history, not valuations.

The figures at a glance

• Engine: 3.0L twin-turbo V6, petrol, 2956 cc, with direct injection. The 2956 cc figure comes from a spec table and from the displacement the catalogue already held, not from Lincoln's ownership page.
• Power: 400 bhp at 5750 rpm. Lincoln and Wikipedia print 400 hp (298 kW) on the US SAE net basis. We treat that as 400 bhp, and the metric equivalent is about 405 PS (400 x 1.01387 is about 405.5), which is our own conversion.
• Torque: 542 Nm at 2750 rpm, the same figure as the 400 lb ft printed by Lincoln and The Drive (400 x 1.3558 is about 542).
• 0-100 km/h: 5.5 seconds. This is a 0-60 mph figure, not 0-100 km/h, so a true 0-62 mph time would be a touch longer. Lincoln does not publish it for this car; The Drive prints 5.5 seconds for the 2020 car and we treat it as indicative for the 2019 car.
• Top speed: 250 km/h is the figure our catalogue holds, but we could not find any source for it. Lincoln publishes no top speed for the Coach Door Edition, and one unattributed spec table lists 173 mph, about 278 km/h. Treat both as unconfirmed.
• Drive: all-wheel drive with torque vectoring, standard with the 3.0L engine, through a six-speed automatic gearbox.
• Dimensions: Wikipedia gives a wheelbase of 3,147 mm (123.9 in) for the Coach Door Edition against 2,995 mm (117.9 in) for the standard car, and a length of 5,268 mm (207.4 in).
• Weight: Lincoln's page says the conversion adds an estimated 100 to 150 lb (roughly 45 to 70 kg) to the weight of the car.

What the 80th Anniversary car is

Lincoln announced the car in December 2018 to mark 80 years since Edsel Ford's 1939 Continental prototype. Slashgear quotes the run as 80 units, one for each year of the Continental. The original idea was that the cars would be personalised, and a Commons caption for the photograph at the top of this page, taken from the launch material, says each would carry a unique badge. The Drive reported in January 2019 that Lincoln said demand exceeded the planned production, and a later report says all 80 were spoken for within 48 hours.

The car is a standard-wheelbase Black Label Continental that is sent to Cabot Coach Builders, in Massachusetts. Sources disagree on the town: Fox News says Haverhill and others say Boston, so we only say Massachusetts. Cabot stretches the car by 6 inches, fits centre-opening rear doors that swing through 90 degrees from the B-pillar, adds a soft-close feature and structural reinforcements, and keeps the E-Latch handles of the regular car. Wikipedia says the rear seat becomes a two-seat arrangement with a full-length centre console. The Drive's January 2019 report adds climate and radio controls on that console, a tablet holder, stowable tray tables and extra rear legroom. Lincoln said the base price would exceed 100,000 dollars, and The Drive put it above 110,000 dollars.

How the 2020 cars differ

For the 2020 model year Lincoln brought the car back after the 2019 cars sold out. Autoblog and The Drive report that orders were open from 4 October to 31 October 2019, that the price started at 115,470 dollars before destination charges, and that Lincoln took reservations for about 150 buyers. Hagerty and Yahoo Autos instead describe the 2020 run as having no set limit, and Wikipedia says approximately 150 were produced. The PistonHeads thread also gives 150. We do not know the true total, and one search summary mentioned 230 cars across both years, which we could not confirm anywhere we read.

The 2020 car is not the 80th Anniversary edition and is not one of the 80. Lincoln's own page lists only 2020, so the manufacturer's online description does not cover the 2019 cars. The mechanical package is described the same way for both, but if an advert says 2020 it is not a car from this guide.

What the PistonHeads thread adds

The PistonHeads source is a forum thread, not an editorial road test, opened on 10 October 2019. One reply describes the conversion as more than 15 cm longer, with a significantly upgraded interior, done by a specialist coachbuilder on top-specification Continentals. That agrees with the 6 inch (15.2 cm) stretch from Lincoln and Cabot. The same reply says 150 are being made, which refers to the 2020 order window and not the 80 in this guide. The rest of the thread is about other cars with rear-hinged doors. It is enthusiast opinion and we use it only for those two points.

Performance claims in context

Nobody we found has published a full test of the Coach Door Edition. The 5.5 seconds above is a figure for the Continental with the 400 bhp engine. Search summaries gave 5.0 seconds attributed to Car and Driver, 5.5 seconds from Edmunds, 5.6 seconds from a spec table and 5.8 seconds from Autoblog for the standard car, and none of those pages loaded for us, so we could not check them. The extra length and 100 to 150 lb of weight will cost a little, so we would expect the Coach Door car to be no quicker than the standard one. That is our inference, not a measurement.

Some listings quote 335 bhp or 2.7 litre figures for the Continental. Those belong to the lower engines of the standard range. Lincoln's materials for the 3.0L give 400 bhp and 400 lb ft on premium fuel, and the Coach Door Edition is described with the 3.0L engine only.

Sources we could not read

Lincoln's own 2019 press pages on media.ford.com returned a 503 error and then a 403 when we tried them, and we did not work around that. The lincoln.com ownership page loaded, but it describes the 2020 car and says nothing about warranty on the conversion, servicing, recalls or the number built. A PDF brochure link returned 404. Edmunds returned 403 as well. Because of this, the 80-car figure rests on Slashgear, The Drive, Wikipedia and the secondary reports above, and the power figures rest on Wikipedia and The Drive as well as the Lincoln material summarised by a search tool.

What to check before buying

• Confirm the car is the 2019 80th Anniversary edition and not a 2020 car. Ask for the VIN, the build sheet and the numbered badge, and check the number against Lincoln or Cabot.
• Ask who services the conversion. Lincoln's page does not say whether Cabot's work carries its own warranty, so get that in writing.
• Open and close every rear door several times. Check the soft-close action, the E-Latch handles, the seals and the alignment of the B-pillar area, because the doors and the reinforced structure are the parts nobody else makes.
• Check the six-speed automatic and all-wheel drive for smooth shifts and no drivetrain noise. We found no published fault list for the 3.0L Continental and give none.
• Check the extended rear cabin: the two-seat rear, the full-length console and any tablet holder or trays.
• Expect limited parts support. Wikipedia says Continental production ended on 30 October 2020 with no full-size replacement, and we found nothing on how parts for the Cabot-specific items are supplied.
• Ask for service records, any accident history and the mileage. The 80 cars were sold in the United States and we found no evidence of an official UK sale.

Recalls and the DVSA check

We did not run the government checker, because it needs a registration number or the make, model and year, and we are not looking at a specific car. The page says the MOT checking service shows outstanding safety recalls for a car with a registration, and the checker needs the make, model and year. It also says non-safety recalls come from the manufacturer directly. We found no recall notice for the Coach Door Edition in any source, and absence from our sources is not a clean bill of health. A US-market car imported into the UK may not appear on the checker at all, so ask a Lincoln dealer in the car's home market to run the VIN.

About the photograph

The picture at the top of this page shows a 2019 80th Anniversary Coach Door Edition in blue with both rear and front doors open, photographed by Andy Wang and published on Wikimedia Commons under CC BY 2.0. It has been cropped and resized. No plate is visible and no people are in the frame.

Verdict

The 2019 Coach Door Edition in this guide is a 400 bhp, 542 Nm, all-wheel drive Continental with a six-inch stretch and centre-opening doors, with a claimed 5.5 seconds to 100 km/h on a 0-60 mph basis and no published top speed beyond our unverified 250 km/h catalogue figure. Its appeal is the coachbuilt body and the number 80, not performance. If you are shopping for one, prove which year it is, get Cabot's side of the paperwork, and treat the published figures as claims with the caveats above. We have not driven it, so use the sources and a proper inspection to decide.