Lincoln Sentinel
Car of the Day #242: 1996 Lincoln Sentinel – Slaberdashery
The world designers inhabit does not exist.
At least, not yet. In a sense, all work we do, all creative effort reverberates between memory, experience from the past and an educated guess about the future.
To me, this reverb unites people as diverse as the farmer investing in new fencing because of prior floods, only to face a coming drought — and the auto design chief premiering a new ultra luxe concept car, only to face a coming corporate crisis.
I’m not talking about the winds blowing in the right direction, or sculpting an inspired fender — I’m only referring to the cascade and swirl of decisions, consequences, and random acts that continuously catalyze our lives from past into present and through our futures.
Lincoln Sentinel concept, first iteration (styling model; 7/8 scale) • via Lincoln
The reverb is felt in our bearings, in the joints of our work and lives.
With that in mind, I present the 1996 Lincoln Sentinel, with a V12 engine and interior, eventually, by Italy’s Ghia.
The reverb within car companies sometimes creates these large lumps of attractive waste heat products, the sort of coarse metallic byproduct of a creative process that exists in equal parts necessity and spite inside every industrial machine.
As the result of this creative process, industrial concerns often view these lumps of creative output as energy-draining tumors and have them cut out and discarded — in a way, this is what happened to the Sentinel.
The Lincoln Sentinel: A stark obelisk for the coming end of days, the Millennium, and the coming renaissance of our slab-sided digital tools.
The updated, second functional car — but still 7/8 scale (see above) • via Lincoln, allcarindex
That I say that the Sentinel could appear in showrooms yesterday is less a function of design prowess and more an indication of how society has shaken us into a place where statistically things are getting better, and functionally becoming worse.
In this world, a junior hedge fund manager would look terrific leaving the city on a Friday in a Lincoln Sentinel. As would a blue suit-wearing car design chief. Or a second-generation farmer, effortlessly returning to rural America after taking their family to that traditional Broadway show about feral cats (how silly).
The Lincoln Sentinel: For Trad Life. The Lincoln Sentinel: Edge Lord. The Lincoln Sentinel: Slack-On.
The least flattering photo shoot for the Sentinel — check out those panel gaps! • source unknown
Anyway, I’ve written about a Claude Lobo design before, the Synergy 2010, and I’m kidding with the above tag lines — I am a Ford New Edge fan in all its forms, from Ka to GT90.
michael banovsky
Thing is, the Sentinel was only ever built in 7/8s scale, for reasons only mid-’90s Ford executives can explain. Built on a Jaguar chassis, when the car was presented as a roller, then Ghia turned it into a drivable car, with a 6-cylinder engine.
Once this was sorted and given a Ghia-styled interior, it was sent back to the U.S. and given the V12 it shared with the GT90 supercar concept also from 1996.
While the GT90 is appreciated today, the Sentinel was panned by many and Lincoln scared itself back to the financial safety of blobular Town Cars and rebadged SUVs.
What is your take on the Sentinel? A design before its time, or a rightfully disliked attempt at taking Lincoln in a completely different direction?
