In 1961, Ford received an order to create a pair of open limousines for Kennedy. The basis of the presidential car was the Lincoln Continental, and the bodywork was done by Hess & Eisenhardt — the same company that had made cars for Harry Truman back in the late forties.
The main feature of the new model was the combination of a convertible body with seven different roof options, some of which were transparent. The doors were made wider to make it easier for passengers to get in and out, and steps with handrails for security guards were provided at the rear. Under the hood of this heavy Lincoln Continental, which weighed up to 3.5 tons, was a V8 and an automatic transmission.
After the tragic events of 1963, when Kennedy was fatally wounded in this Lincoln, the car was sent for a major rework: it was fitted with titanium armor and bulletproof glass. A permanent roof also appeared at that time. In this form, the limousine was used by subsequent presidents — Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Carter. In 1977, the car was decommissioned and handed over to the Ford Museum in Detroit.
The second limousine, which is now to be sold at auction, turned out to be luckier. It has not lost its original essence and will appear before buyers in the form in which John Kennedy knew it. All this time, the car was kept in a private collection. In the late eighties, its engine, gearbox, and radiator were fully restored, after which the mileage was only 650 kilometers.
The auction is scheduled for October 11 in Knokke-Heist, Belgium. It is expected that this lot will be valued at 90–160 thousand euros. For comparison: Elvis Presley's Cadillac previously went at the Mecum online auction in Santa Monica for only 57 thousand dollars.
And Nicholas II's Rolls-Royce was put up on the Autoscout24 online platform with a price tag of 8 million euros.
