In 2016, Jim purchased a rare but dowdy 1963 Lincoln sedan. His goal was to have a sedan to go with his award winning 1963 Lincoln convertible because Lincoln only made two models at that time. (Later in 1966, they added a coupe at the time of the first major re-design.

The car Jim purchased had only 27,000 original miles and most importantly had never been modified in 43 years. Everything was original except the tires and rims.

Jim recruited his friend Mike Moreno, the most gifted Lincoln restoration specialist in the country, to do the restoration and called upon his friends Chris Dunn of Lincoln Land in Clearwater Florida and Jim Wallace of Leather Restorations for additional help.

The car you see below is the result of a three year rotisserie restoration and quite possibly is the finest sedan in existence. Every part of the car was either rebuilt or replaced with OEM parts to achieve this result. The exceptional body work was done by Benny’s Auto Body shop in La Mesa California after Mike carefully removed the engine, the interior and all windows and trim. Benny had the car for almost a year as he carefully addressed some rust issues that were typical of these cars.  Black is an exceptionally difficult color to use because it will typically highlight any imperfections in the body of the car, so Benny gave the prep work a lot of TLC and the final paint work is exceptional.

As a result, Jim is now the proud custodian of two 100 point 1963 Lincolns.

By the way, the color combination in this car was actually used in the magazine ads put out by Ford Motor Company to advertise the sedan.