My Lincoln Town Car

This is a barge I've always wanted to own, and one I don't think I'll ever get rid of. Last Christmas, I ended up getting one as a taxi in Long Island and was amazed at how solid it still felt, despite having very high mileage. I made up my mind to get one once I returned home, but I quickly realized how difficult it was to find a facelift one in good condition.

The front of the pre-facelift ones remind me a bit too much of the MK2 Mondeo, so those were all ruled out, and I wanted one in black with a cream interior, which narrowed things down more. Virtually all the facelift ones here are imported, which means you can virtually guarantee they've been written off in the US or had 300k+ taken off the odometer.

After a long time searching, I finally found one. It wasn't perfect: it was missing paint on the rear bumper, it had some dents in the wing, the remote locking wasn't working, plus the door cards and front seats weren't in great shape. On the plus side, it had the original invoice from the main dealer in my city, and it had spent most of its life with the same person who'd bought it new. Mechanically, it felt very good, and there were no warning lights on the dash.

The seller was a part time used car dealer trying to pass it off as his own car. A quick search found that he'd only owned it for a couple of weeks, and had bought it for a fair bit less than he'd advertised it for. I knew the car was a good one though, so after a bit of negotiation it ended up coming home with me.

Once I got it home, I set to work fixing some of the issues. First of all, I got the dents in the wing pulled out, and the bumper painted.

Then, I started to do some research to find out why the remote locking wasn't working. After paying a couple of people who wanted to rip everything out and install an aftermarket system, no doubt breaking a million clips and causing endless rattles in the process, we managed to trace the fault to the driver's door module. This proved impossible to find in Mexico, but a very kind member of the Lincoln group in the US mailed me one for free.

It was simple to change, and immediately fixed the issue.

Other than the issues it had when I bought it, only one other thing went wrong in the last 10k miles: the rear window regulator failed. I stopped at a little roadside shop and they fixed it for the equivalent of about £20. This is another huge advantage of having a car like this as opposed to something European: parts are readily available and extremely cheap.

I've driven this car an awful lot since buying it: it's been to all the surrounding states, and soaks up the terrible quality roads with ease (the ground clearance and 60 profile tyres are a big help). It feels totally solid, and doesn't rattle over bumps whatsoever, unlike my far newer and lower mileage Lincoln MKZ I had before. I'm planning on visiting the junkyards of Texas in a few weeks, in the hope of getting new front seats, armrest, door cards and steering wheel to make the interior look like new. It's definitely a car I have 100% confidence in - I'd happily get in and drive it to Canada tomorrow if I had the time, and I'd like to get it looking as close to new as possible.