[quote LV3OZCD03EYEV66W]It certainly is a lesson in understated elegance, to the point of being almost stark in the manner of later stripper models, and notably before Elwood Engle's '61 Lincoln and Jack Humbert's 1963 Pontiac GP made this look fashionable. The lack of tumble-home leaving the sills as wide as they are seems to me to make it a little chubby from some angles. That lowered black one looks really stunning though. Interestingly, Harley Earl took the opposite tack and there is nothing understated in the Continental's direct competitor, the Cadillac Eldorado Brougham. One suspects that MrEarl captured the zeitgeist of the intended market a little better and for those paying $10K or more, the greater the entertainment and extravagance in looks the better. It could be argued that the 1961 Lincoln reprises the Mark II's understated elegance and that the two of them book-end the overblown Lincoln monstrosities that prowled the earth between 1958 and '60.[/quote] I'd dispute the '61 Continental. They're quite fussy in the front and rear detailing. Granted I'm biased but to my eye the '64 Electra is a cleaner and more elegant design than the Continental