Looking back at this commercial, you can see exactly how our cars got called land yachts.
This is Lincoln-Mercury showing off its 1969 models, and just watch these things move through the streets. Long hood. Long trunk. Chrome everywhere. Whitewalls. Hidden headlights. They don’t look like they’re driving — they look like they’re sailing.
And they really were enormous.
A 1969 Mercury Marquis stretched 224.3 inches long. That’s 18 feet, 8 inches of automobile, riding on a 124-inch wheelbase and measuring nearly 80 inches wide. The convertible could weigh around 4,550 pounds.
Then you opened the hood and found a 429-cubic-inch — seven-liter — V8, rated at 320 gross horsepower, with a 360-horsepower version available.
Even the wood-paneled Colony Park station wagon you see cruising along in this commercial was over 18 feet long.
But here’s something I found interesting: “land yacht” wasn’t always entirely an insult. These huge American cars were designed to give you that soft, effortless, floating highway ride. You weren’t supposed to feel every corner in the road. You were supposed to sit back on that huge bench seat and cruise.
And listen to that jingle:
“Lincoln-Mercury Leads the Way.”
It actually started as “Step to the Rear,” a song written by Elmer Bernstein and Carolyn Leigh for the Broadway musical How Now, Dow Jones. Singer Marilyn Maye recorded it, and Lincoln-Mercury hired her to rerecord the song with advertising lyrics. She continued singing the campaign for several years.
Lincoln-Mercury really committed to this campaign, too. For one commercial shoot in 1968, they constructed a 67-foot-long, 31-foot-high “Lincoln Mercury Leads the Way” sign on an offshore island and used a helicopter to get equipment there.
Everything about this era was big.
The cars, the engines, the advertising — and apparently even the signs.
Did your family have one of these giant cars — and what was the biggest “land yacht” you remember riding in?
