1938 Lincoln Zephyr

Henry Leland and his son Wilfred founded the Lincoln Motor Company in August of 1917. Leland was among the founder of Cadillac who had sold the company to General Motors in 1909, and stayed on as an executive. He left the company in 1917 following a dispute with GM President William Durant concerning war production. Cadillac had been asked to produce Liberty aircraft engines to support the war effort but Durant was a pacifist. Leland founded Lincoln and accepted the $10,000,000 contract to build the V12 Liberty engines.

In 1922, the young Lincoln Motor Company was acquired by the Ford Motor Company for a mere $8 million. Leland and his son Wilfred continued to run the company after the acquisition, but this proved to be temporary. Relations between the Leland and the Henry Ford workers continued to deteriorate. On June 10th of 1922, both Henry and Wilfred resigned.

Edsel Ford began taking a larger role in the management of Lincoln, working to extinguish the conservative and outdated reputation of the Model L. Edsel Ford was attracted to European automobile styling, and he began working with designer E.T. Gregorie, Jr. to bring his design ideas into fruition. In 1923, Edsel introduced the Model L in custom-bodied form directly from Lincoln, resulting in a 45-percent increase in sales over the prior year, and a return to profitability. In 1924, a Lincoln Model L became the first state limousine used by a U.S. President on an official basis. Within a few years, Lincoln had become a direct competitor to the most elite automobile builders in the industry, including Marmon, Packard, Peerless, Pierce-Arrow and Cadillac. During the early 1930s, at the height of the Great Depression and the cylinder wars, Lincoln introduced the V12-engined Model K, soon retiring the V8 model and becoming the first manufacturer in the world to produce vehicles exclusively with V12 engines. This made the Lincoln automobiles even more exclusive during an time when the pool of buyers were dwindling due to the economical conditions.

The Lincoln Zephyr
In an effort to increase sales and bridge the gap between the Ford V8 DeLuxe and the Lincoln Model K, the Lincoln marque received a second model line, marking the first time it offered two models at the same time during its existence. The Lincoln-Zephyr was introduced on November 2nd of 1935, as a 1936 model. It was based on a design by John Tjaarda who, as Joop Tjaarda van Starkenburg in his native Holland, had penned this concept study in the 1920s. He emigrated to the United States in 19233 and began working at Ford. Edsel Ford was impressed by his drawings and commissioned a full size example to be built. The resulting Briggs-built Zephyr concept was smooth, streamlined, and had a low front and rear-mounted engine. It was displayed for the first time at the 1934 Century of Progress exhibition in Chicago, Illinois and a year later put into production, albeit with a front-mounted V12.

The styling was fine-tuned by Eugene T. 'Bob' Gregorie with input from Edsel and was assembled at the Lincoln Motor Company Plant in Detroit, Michigan. The aerodynamic design had a low raked windscreen, integrated fenders, a futuristic interior and powered by an L-head engine mounted at a 75-degree angle and delivering 110 horsepower. Closed body styles were offered for 1936 and 1937 with new open styles added to the line in 1938.

The Zephyr succeeded in reigniting Lincoln sales and accounted for 80-percent of vehicles sold in its first year. Prices ranged from $1,275 to $1,320 and during its first year of production, a total of 18,994 Lincoln models were sold with 17,715 of those being Zephyrs.

Production of the Zephyr and all American cars was halted by the Government in 1942 as the country entered World War II. The last Lincoln Zephyr was produced on February 10th. When peace time resumed, the Zephyr name was no longer used and the cars were simply called Lincolns.

by Daniel Vaughan | Jun 2020