The reasons why people want a particular vehicle outnumber the people who own them. But here’s one you won’t hear often: “My mom thought it would be cool.”
“OK, so I grew up liking Lincolns, because of the stories my mom told me about living in Southern California,” Nick Griot continues. “One of her best friend’s parents had Continental hardtops. She talked about eating Twinkies in those cars as she and her friend were driven back and forth to school. I was into Camaros and she was like, ‘Those are gross cars. Why don’t you build a nice old car like a Lincoln?’ She put that in my head.”
Then fate gave Nick another reason to own a Kennedy Continental. Again, it’s not a common one. “My wife and I bought this house,” he explains.
“When we closed we got this historical photo album,” he says. “One of those photographs had a picture of the driveway.” And in the carport at the end of that driveway sat two Kennedy Continentals, a white hardtop and a black convertible. “We closed on April 30, 2015,” Nick says. “It was 10 days later I bought a 1963 Lincoln.
“My goal was to do that car not only so my mom would like it but to bring a Continental back to that house. The timing was good, too; I had what I thought was a minor house renovation.” Even the car’s description matched the house’s—cosmetically needing but admirably intact. “Every surface needed to be touched, but it was complete.” The person from whom Nick bought it purchased it from the man who owned it from 1967 to 2014. Like the house, it came with its own photo of album of sorts. “He had every record and photos of the car in every scenario you can imagine over the years. It was clear that he loved it.
“I brought it straight to the house where I was living, which was the carriage house above my dad’s garage. (Before you pass judgment, know that Nick’s dad is Richard Griot, founder of Griot’s Garage, the car-care company) “I brought it into our personal garage and six Griot’s Garage employees came over, and we pulled the engine. That was the thing I knew needed to go after I did all the research; the 430 is unique, and there aren’t many tuning paths to go.
“I experimented to see if I could save the paint and bring the stainless trim back on a buffing wheel,” he says. “All of those litmus tests failed.” In fact, the car was taking a direction much like the one his house had, “…which was a whole huge mess!” he says, laughing. “‘We’ll just clean everything and put a new engine in it’ became, ‘OK, everything needs to be done.’”
He found a sympathetic ear in Jared Hancock at J-Rod & Custom in Auburn, Washington. His crew built a killer phantom two-door three-series BMW wagon for the Griots and is in the process of going through a Lamborghini Espada for the family.
“It spiraled into this crazy Pro Touring concept,” Nick says. “We could never get that idea out of our heads, so we just ran with it.”
To get the stance right, the J-Rod crew modified the front suspension for clearance. They replaced the rear leaf springs with a four-link made from Art Morrison Enterprises components. Both ends ride on RideTech coilovers. “Everyone is shocked that it’s static,” Nick says.
They modified the wheeltubs, but not how you’d expect. “There’s a lot of space between the quarter-panel skin and the wheelwell,” Nick points out. “So we made a new outer wheelwell that followed the contour of the quarter-panel very tight,” Hancock adds. “(It) gave the car an aggressive purpose-built look with the rear wheels sitting where they should.”
Those wheels are 20×9 and 20×11 Forgeline CF3Cs. They wear 255/40ZR20 and 305/35ZR20 Pirelli P-Zero. They narrowed the 9-inch axle 2 inches to make the rear wheels deeper. A set of Baer 13-inch rotors and six- and four-piston calipers promise to scrub off speed.
Though 427 ci, the Ford Motorsports 535hp Boss crate is based on the legendary Windsor architecture. Oddly enough it makes sense for this series Lincoln. “The car is incredibly large, but it’s a unibody and the engine bay is deceptively small,” Nick says.
Nick laments that in stock form everything crowds the engine. “Everything was stamped here, and there was a strut tower there,” he says. So Chad Terhar and Ross Petersen reshaped a simpler engine compartment. The air filter housing that Ross formed conceals the ignition wires on their way back to the firewall, where they circle around and project forward to the plugs. “There was a ton of effort in trying to simplify the engine and make it look like a centerpiece of the car,” Hancock explains. Evod Industries machined the rocker covers in the likeness of the ones that came on the 430.
Hancock fabricated the headers from 1 7/8-inch stainless. He built the exhaust system from 3-inch pipes, a J-Rod JCX X-pipe, and a set of Flowmaster mufflers. Those pipes pass an AOD built by Tacoma’s Kerry Holmgren. It spins a 4.11:1 gear on a Strange Engineering limited-slip carrier with 31-spline axles.
Externally, the car remains largely stock right down to the handles and badges. Hancock opened up the bumper to extend the radiator’s intake area. The chin spoiler does more than look cool; it directs more cooling air to the radiator, transmission, and power-steering coolers. Josh Jones and Ray Porthan prepped and painted it the ideal color for the son of the proprietor of a car-care company: PPG 9700 black. Jason Kilmer cut and polished it to its ultimate shine and Ogden Plating chromed everything, stainless included.
Jamie McFarland at McFarland Custom Upholstery in nearby Puyallup worked up a contemporary leather twist on the stately interior. A set of Dakota Digital VHX-series gauges replaces the mechanical movements.
Nick loves the car. But more importantly, how does his mom, Sara, feel about it? “She thinks it’s too loud, which is perfect,” he says, chuckling.
A 1960s Lincoln isn’t as exotic as the sports and racing cars in the Griot’s Garage stable. But when he talks about it, Nick’s face lights up in a way that it doesn’t about those other cars. It’s obvious that he has a deeper connection to it. Which I’m sure Sara Griot would interpret as mother, and not father, actually knows best. SRM
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