Originally published in the November-December 2004 (# 261) issue of Lincoln & Continental Comments magazine.
From the time Ford took over Lincoln in February, 1922, Lincoln advertising has always been as stylish as the cars. That is because Edsel Ford was a highly creative person, and he knew that good automobile advertising was an art form. See the famous 1923 Jordan ad, Somewhere West of Laramie compared to the interesting but conservative introductory 1921 Lincoln ad written for the Saturday Evening Post in 1920 by Henry M. Leland, and reprinted in the last issue of Continental Comments.
In the twenties, Lincoln had beautiful four-color ads with tropical birds in the background painted by famous illustrators of the day. The cars were portrayed in beautiful, brilliant colors, With the coming of the Lincoln-Zephyr in 1936, Lincoln pioneered four-color photography. Lincoln was not the first automobile manufacturer to use color photography, but they carried it to new heights. Remember, Edsel Ford, himself, was by all accounts a very good photographer.
In the late forties, with Edsel gone, Lincoln went back to illustrations, and went through kind of a ho-hum advertising period with the campaign slogan Nothing Could Be Finer. Even the 1949-51 Lincoln advertising showed nothing much better than the competition was doing.
Then for 1952, Lincoln came out with an all new car with an ohv V-8 engine and very contemporary styling. Their advertising theme was Designed for Modern Living which showed how well Lincoln fit in with the finest lifestyles of the time. (See the following two pages.) Brochures were an interesting combination of illustrations and photography. In the brochure Luxury With a Modern Outlook on two of the following pages, only the instrument panel is a photograph. All of the other illustrations are artwork, but you would never know it. One of the brochures, Modern Woman, is aimed exclusively at women. Advertising to women was carried to the extreme with Julia Meade on The Ed Sullivan Show, which was sponsored by Lincoln-Mercury. In Continental Comments #259, Bob Blevins, Yuma, Arizona, shared with us some of his Lincoln advertising illustrations of 1952. He sent us so many advertisements and brochures, we could not even begin to use all of them in that issue. So, here again is more 1952 Lincoln advertising from the Bob Blevins collection. Thanks for your fine contributions, Bob.
WEBMASTER’S NOTE: The above two images would appear as one in the magazine on opposing pages. In the interest of viewability, I have posted each page separately on this web page.