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Lincoln once let Cartier sign the glass on a coupe more than 19 feet long, and buyers paid thousands extra for the privilege. This 1979 Lincoln Continental Mark V Cartier Edition is live at no reserve on Hagerty Marketplace in Canaan, New Hampshire. It shows 43,250 miles, a high bid of $8,750 across 13 bids as of Friday morning, Nov. 6, and an ending time of Tuesday, Nov. 10, at 2:55 p.m. ET.
What the Mark V was
The Mark V was a 1977 redesign of the Mark IV and stayed in production for just three model years at Wixom, Michigan. It rode a 120.4-inch wheelbase and ran 230.3 inches end to end, with a Ford C6 three-speed automatic as the only transmission. A 400-cubic-inch V8 was standard, and the 460 was optional early on. By 1979 the 460 had been dropped, according to Hagerty's history of the model, as Lincoln chased fuel economy.
It was the last of the big Marks. For 1980, Lincoln replaced it with the smaller Mark VI on Ford's Panther platform, and the Mark line carried on through the VII and VIII before ending in 1998. Lincoln's four-door sibling of the same era gets a similar look in our write-up of a 38-years-owned 1978 Lincoln Town Car, also on Hagerty.
When the jeweler got a trim package
Lincoln launched its Designer Series in 1976 on the Mark IV, with Cartier, Bill Blass, Emilio Pucci and Hubert de Givenchy each lending a name to a package of paint, trim and interior colors. The Mark V kept the program going. Each version had its own look, a designer signature in gold on the opera windows and a 22-karat gold-plated nameplate on the dash. Hagerty says the designer editions added roughly $7,000 to $9,000 to the showroom price.
Cartier was the volume seller. Sales figures compiled on Wikipedia show it outselling the other three designer packages in both 1978 and 1979, at roughly 9,500 cars in the final year. Putting a designer's name on a Detroit coupe was a relatively cheap way to sell exclusivity in the 1970s, a trend that also gave AMC a Pierre Cardin Javelin and an Oleg Cassini Matador, according to eBay Motors' history of the Cartier Edition.
Why you forgot it
The personal luxury coupe was a 1970s sales formula built on length, velour and hidden headlights, and the downsizing that followed pushed it aside. Buick kept a version going into the 1990s, as we covered with a supercharged 1998 Buick Riviera, and Cadillac took a more European swing with the Pininfarina-bodied Allanté, which we looked at in a 2,100-mile 1991 example. The Cartier name itself outlasted the Mark V by decades, appearing on Lincoln Town Cars until 2014, per Hagerty.
The car in the listing
This Mark V is finished in Light Champagne with dark red accents over Champagne crushed velour, according to the listing. It has 15-inch wire wheels on whitewall tires, a power moonroof, automatic climate control, cruise control, Twin Comfort Lounge seats, concealed headlights, Cartier script on the opera windows, and a factory AM/FM QuadraSonic stereo with an 8-track player. The 400 V8 is paired with the three-speed automatic, and the trim tag decodes to an April 1979 build date.
The seller acquired the car in 2025 and describes it as a turnkey driver with cold air conditioning, a working moonroof, working power seats and windows, and a functional 8-track. By the seller's account, everything works except one cigarette lighter. Reported service includes the passenger-side exhaust manifold, catalytic converter and exhaust system, a distributor cap, rotor and spark plugs, rear springs and shocks, and rear brake rotors. The sale includes a set of original wheels and tires, a five-volume shop manual set, a collection of 8-track tapes, a car cover and a clean New Hampshire title in the seller's name.
What to know before bidding
The listing discloses corrosion on undercarriage components, a hood the seller believes has been repainted, and some paint chips on the front fascia. The odometer reading is labeled TMU, meaning true mileage unknown, so treat 43,250 as what the dash says rather than a verified figure. The trim-tag decode in the listing mentions a leather interior luxury group, while the description calls the seats crushed velour, so it is worth asking the seller to clarify.
For context, Hagerty's valuation commentary puts excellent-condition Mark Vs of every variant under $20,000. The record it cites is $49,500 for a museum-quality 1978 Diamond Jubilee Edition with 56 miles. The original Hagerty Marketplace listing has 63 photos, the seller's full description and the bid history, and bidders should do their own due diligence before the Tuesday afternoon close.
