Lot 124

Motor City 2014

1925 Lincoln Model L Seven-Passenger "Police Flyer" by American Body Company

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$68,750 USD | Sold

United States | Plymouth, Michigan

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Chassis No.
26004
Engine No.
26004
Body No.
2-3136
  • Extraordinarily rare police-specification model with factory four-wheel brakes
  • One of only three dual-windshield Style 124C bodies built in 1925
  • Offered from three decades of single-family ownership
  • A CCCA Full Classic

Style 124C. 90 bhp, 357 cu. in. L-head eight-cylinder engine, four-speed manual transmission, front and rear semi-elliptic leaf springs, and four-wheel mechanical drum brakes. Wheelbase: 126 in.

Following Henry Ford’s purchase of the Lincoln Motor Company, a new law enforcement model, the so-called “Police Flyer,” was introduced. This model was equipped to suit the needs of its blue-uniformed buyers, and it was available with options not available to the general public. The most important was the addition of four-wheel brakes, which were used on Police Flyers two years before becoming available to private customers.

Production records from the Benson Ford Research Center, which accompany the sale of the car, indicate that chassis 26004 was built on April 13, 1925. The records also indicate that only 15 of the Style 124C bodies, denoted by the presence of a rear windshield, were ever constructed. Only three of those were ever built on the 1925 chassis.

Chassis 26004 has always been followed by the long-held belief that it was originally supplied to the City of New York. Since coming out of the service of its original owner, it has been well looked after and kept “on the button” through its life. The car is known to have been owned early in its life by Harold K. Williams, of South Ashburnham, Massachusetts, from whose estate it was acquired by Robert P. King, of Gardner, Massachusetts, in 1966. In the eighties, it was acquired by the father of the consignor, a highly regarded New England restorer with many concours accolades, including a Pebble Beach Best of Show, to his credit.

This Lincoln was the recipient of new paint and a new top in the mid-1980s, and it has never required the sort of restoration to which many 1920s cars have been subjected. It is even believed that the wonderfully preserved interior is original. Inspection shows that the body has never been removed from the frame, and the engine, transmission, sheet metal, and wood framing are all original. The car is still accompanied by its original tonneau cover and side curtains, as well as a score of invoices from Rolls-Royce specialist Frank Cooke’s The Vintage Garage, which documents a full engine overhaul and other work carried out.

Now in its third decade of well-maintained family ownership, the car has continued to be looked after and is described as “100% ready for a CARavan or the Glidden Tour,” activities for which the car, with its four-wheel brakes, is superbly well suited.

For decades, Ford Motor Company’s “Police Interceptor” models fought the good fight on the highways and biways of America. Offered here is their earliest predecessor, an eminently tourable piece of law enforcement history, which also just happens to be a CCCA Full Classic.