It was perfect matching and perfectly contrasting.
President Eisenhower wore hats and he was chauffeured around town in a big and bulbous black 1950 Lincoln Cosmopolitan limo. It made sense. Ike was a white-haired, bald, kindly old guy with glasses. We all had grandfathers like that. They wore hats and had 10 year-old cars. And they were married to grandmotherly-looking women - like Mamie.
Then Jack Kennedy came along - what a contrast! No glasses, no hat, a head full of rich brown hair, a hot-looking, multilingual, cosmopolitan babe of a wife. So, it made perfect sense that they'd match this President up with a new kind of car - not some big old chrome-laden whale but a modern car with clean lines - a sophisticated car to fit the kind of guy Jack was.
It was called SS-100-X, derived from the new 1961 Lincoln Continental. The completely redesigned slab-sided Lincoln was a design milestone and therefore, the perfect choice. The car was built by Ford's Advanced Vehicles Group assisted by the coachbuilder, Hess & Eisenhardt. The stretched SS-100-X had a 156-inch wheelbase and was over 21 feet long. It weighed almost 8,000 pounds but, because of its simple lines, it didn't look like a whale or barge.
It wasn't painted the usual funereal black either; the vehicle was finished in a rich, preppy navy blue. Elegant. Inside, it had a two-tone blue leather interior. Posh. They finished the car off with turbine-blade Continental Mark II wheelcovers. Classy. The SS-100-X was the first Presidential limo with air conditioning. Cool. It had several tops including a clear bubble top which could be left off on sunny days. Clever.
Ford Motor Company offered to lease it to the White House for $500 per month. Picture Jack, sitting in his rocking chair in that classic Kennedy pose, waving his cigarette around and telling some staff member, "Pay them. It's worth it." The finished car was delivered in June, 1961. The big Lincoln soon became almost as recognizable as JFK himself.
In November 1963, it all ended. Jack was dead. Killed in his Lincoln. Assassinated by rifle bullets. People said he would have lived if only they had mounted the clear Plexiglas bubble top on the car on that sunny day in Dallas. They were wrong. Because the acrylic was only 1/4 inch thick - just substantial enough to keep out the weather. To be bulletproof, the plastic needed to be almost 2 inches thick.
They sent the car back to Ford. It was completely overhauled and returned to President Johnson. Gone was the Plexi bubble top, replaced by a rigid, non-removable roof. The Lincoln had been bullet-proofed, armor-plated and now weighed almost 10,000 pounds. They repainted the vehicle in a somber black, reupholstered the interior in a muted, bland grey fabric and stuck on some anonymous Lincoln wheelcovers.
The car was never the same. And neither were we.
In 1961, John F. Kennedy becomes the 35th President of the United States and, at 43, the youngest. JFK is Time magazine's Man of the Year.