TOWN CARS Arriving in Style

Today the name Town Car is almost exclusively associated with Lincoln, but that was by no means the case for most of the 20th Century. From the first use of the term in 1907 through the 1970s, “town car” referred to a vehicle of any manufacture that was fitted with a body having an open chauffeur’s compartment and an enclosed passenger area. Elegant and dignified, they were originally intended for local use on formal occasions and were almost always the most expensive body style offered by a manufacturer. In keeping with the “upstairs-downstairs” nature of the town car, passengers enjoyed a plush seating area trimmed with expensive fittings, while the driver was obliged to sit on stiff leather upholstery and was normally provided no top for protection from the elements.

Like most practices involving early automobiles, the idea of a driver sitting in the open, while his passengers sat in enclosed comfort, began with the horse-drawn carriage. When gasoline, steam and electric power began to replace that of the horse, the new self-propelled carriages differed little in their general appearance from their immediate predecessors and the tradition of drivers sitting on open benches in front of the passengers continued. However, whereas carriage drivers once maneuvered their vehicles with reins, they now had to operate steering, acceleration and braking mechanisms. These inherently complex mechanical systems required skills to run that the typical horseman lacked, and a new class of technicians stepped in to fill the need. These specialists had the responsibility for driving their employers’ machines safely on public roads, repairing them when they broke down, fixing flat tires and maintaining their appearance during any downtime. To distinguish them from their horse-drawn carriage predecessors, this new class of automobile drivers came to be known as “chauffeurs,” a French word meaning “stokers” that harkened back to early railroad steam engine operators who had to stoke the boiler fires to keep them going.