Please rate a 1933 Lincoln KB restored town sedan as a tour car. Im considering one now.

Most CCCA "Classics" are big, heavy cars.  There's no way to answer your question unless a mechanic familiar with such early '30s cars puts it on a lift, drives it, inspects it like any other used car.  Many body off restorations are not roadworthy, being what friends in the old plane game call "paint overhauls."

 That said, assuming this '33 Lincoln town sedan is one of those rare cars mechanically as sound as its cosmetics,  it comes down to your having driven any big, multi-cylinder luxe car of the era as to its suitability.

Does it have a Gear Vendors or other after-market overdrive, or higher speed axle?   If not, you'd be wise to respect its technology and age by staying in the right lane of freeways, or better, confining cruises to back and secondary roads.  Properly adjusted mechanical brakes are no match for today's power four-wheel discs with ABS,  let alone roads filled with those distracted by cellphones, texting, tweeting, eating, dashboard display screens, fiddling with the stereo.  

   I believe most Lincoln specialists would agree that the KB was the zenith of the big (non-Zephyr) Lincolns, the ensuing Model Ks through 1940s slightly second tier in comparison.  However, no cars from either side of the Atlantic or Channel had finer craftsmanship than the big Lincolns of the '30s.   

    Find someone in the local region of the Lincoln Owners Club who lives near you to examine it:

https://lincolnownersclub.com/

Free advice is worth what you pay for it but......

I have completed about 25 CARavans with the CCCA. A lot depends upon what you are looking for.

Early Classics are (to me) more beautiful but take more effort. Cars from the late 40's (to me) almost

seem like cheating. I just finished the PNW CARavan up into Canada and we had a beautiful 33 KB on the

tour. It performed well. Lincoln KBs are very nice cars. Maybe more important than the exact model and

year, is the true condition. The things that I have seen keep cars from finishing these tours or making them

difficult are; vapor lock, overheating, fuel pump problems, loss of generators. I would check the Lincoln out

on a warm day up a very long and hard grade. I agree with the overdrive to protect your investment.

Make sure that you fit in the car and that the seat adjustment and visibility are good for you.

Johnny

ps. We are putting on a CARavan in the California Gold Country and the Napa Valley in May of 2024.

I drove a 47 Caddy for the first time yesterday. Definitely cheating compared to a car of early 30s vintage.

Mike, a KB can be a fantastic car but whether the specific one you are looking at is any good can only be answered by you.   As mentioned before, cooling and vapor lock are big problems.  In general how sorted for driving is it?  The high speed rear is really nice depending on the tour.

More thoughts,  a town sedan is the club sedan?  Great body style.  The 33 KB is still the fork and blade engine,  that is a 75K rebuild these days.  So you better do a compression, leak down and get the oil analyzed first. 

All good points, The seller hasnt run the car in 3 years and if i want to hear it , its at my time, and expense.  I getting less interested everyday

I've come to the conclusion that these complicated V engines aren't worth the time and expense. Personally, I'd stick with a 6 or an 8, straight engine. I like your
Franklin's better...

JV, a lifelong Packard maven, who's owned over 70 pre- and postwar, junior and senior, including a couple Twelves, multiple Darrins, would agree with you, as do i, he saying of V-12s, "too much of a good thing."   Something poetic about inline sixes and straight eights, the only two automotive engines with natural inherent balance.   V-12s and V-16s are really just more of the same with less crankpin loading but more parts, complexity.  For us, straight 8s for old road cars, luxe or not, and inline 6s for old sport and GT cars.  

 What more could anyone want on this mortal coil?

 The older i get, the more i see V-12s, etc. as the SUVs, stupid useless vehicles, of their time,  at best fire trucks, parade floats;  something ridiculous about them, really.  Too ponderous.  Desperate automakers pulling out all the stops to entice what frivolous money remained by offering "ultimate" cars to those somehow needing self-agrandizement; to swan around in comic opera cars.    Show us anything of the '30s better than a Pierce-Arrow 8 close-coupled club sedan, for one.   And Gawd, enough about Duesenberg...Anyone can build a cost-no-object "super" car, but it takes tremendous skill and talent to render something on the order of a '36-on Century, Roadmaster, Packard 120 or 160.   And we've yet to hear how a Model J is somehow five (5) times better than a 1931-33 Chrysler Imperial by having twin cams and a cuckoo box full of gears flashing lights for oil change, Bijur chassis lube shared with dozens of other high-end cars, and to check battery level, it taking nine years and several iterations to dispatch 480 of them to Hollywooders and the scions of industrial wealth, who didn't mind a crash box, long timing chains that could stretch at high rpm upsetting valve timing, front end vibration periods cursing most long wheelbase cars of the day when cart springing at the end of its tether.  Too many caveats w/ Js, even the factory quickly offering the blown connecting rods in lieu of the aluminum.  A friend's on his third J.  Sure, impressive when that huge engine rushes you forward, unpassable in its day on a long, straight road, but compared with other more refined juggernauts, a one-trick pony.  Topline farm tractors also offered enameled and polished engine fittings during the Depression to attract what money remained, 25% unemployment in the East and industrial upper Midwest, less so in the more agricultural west.   

JCrow above is right, cars of the '40s seem like cheating.  But if sheer size and engine finish are your holy grails, a J, Phantom II, Lincoln K/KB hard to beat, a Packard the most refined overall,  and if we're splitting hairs, no finer inline or veed engines than Pierce's.    Nest feathering and one marque-itis do not serve perspective.

 Remember, the single biggest, longest thread on the CCCA forums is about the vast, overbearing pushrod ohv Mercedes 500/540Ks, which could only make peak power for a matter of 20 to at very most 30 seconds....without courting disaster, otherwise 115 hp and 5,400 lbs.,  while the most owned car by members a three-main-bearinged flathead 1941-47 Cadillac sharing the same sheet metal as Pontiac.   This would suggest a number of fundamentally unhappy Walter Mitties.   

 Since money and unrequited testoterone still hold sway on such forums,  Bill Harrah's three favorite marques were Ford, Franklin, and Packard.    

Su8overdriveNov 19, 2023

The older i get, the more i see V-12s, etc. as the SUVs, stupid useless vehicles, of their time,  at best fire trucks, parade floats;  something ridiculous about them, really. 

Clearly you never had a pack of young kids that needed to be somewhere while it was snowing sideways outside.   If you did you would realize that an SUV is the greatest invention ever.

alsancleNov 22, 2023

Clearly you never had a pack of young kids that needed to be somewhere while it was snowing sideways outside.   If you did you would realize that an SUV is the greatest invention ever.

While I agree with 99% of what you usually post AJ, we part slightly here.  The 4WD extended cab full size pick up is the greatest invention with the SUV a close second.  We have one of each of those fantabulous creations.

Mike on your Lincoln I think you may see some better options than what you describe what about an earlier V8 variant?  Still wishing I grabbed the Lincoln L that forum member Steve Pughs bought a few years back.  Ran nice once my pal Ray rotated the dist 180 degrees... 

Su8overdriveOct 24, 2023

Most CCCA "Classics" are big, heavy cars.  There's no way to answer your question unless a mechanic familiar with such early '30s cars puts it on a lift, drives it, inspects it like any other used car.  Many body off restorations are not roadworthy, being what friends in the old plane game call "paint overhauls."

 That said, assuming this '33 Lincoln town sedan is one of those rare cars mechanically as sound as its cosmetics,  it comes down to your having driven any big, multi-cylinder luxe car of the era as to its suitability.

Does it have a Gear Vendors or other after-market overdrive, or higher speed axle?   If not, you'd be wise to respect its technology and age by staying in the right lane of freeways, or better, confining cruises to back and secondary roads.  Properly adjusted mechanical brakes are no match for today's power four-wheel discs with ABS,  let alone roads filled with those distracted by cellphones, texting, tweeting, eating, dashboard display screens, fiddling with the stereo.  

   I believe most Lincoln specialists would agree that the KB was the zenith of the big (non-Zephyr) Lincolns, the ensuing Model Ks through 1940s slightly second tier in comparison.  However, no cars from either side of the Atlantic or Channel had finer craftsmanship than the big Lincolns of the '30s.   

    Find someone in the local region of the Lincoln Owners Club who lives near you to examine it:

https://lincolnownersclub.com/

The later Model K engine doesn't have quite the cachet of the fork and blade V12 used in 1932-33, but it is definitely not "second tier".  The 414 cubic inch V12 used from 1934 until the end in 1939-40 puts out more horsepower and torque than the somewhat larger 32-33 fork and blade engine and is quite reliable.  It will drag my 1937 145 inch wheelbase Judkins two window berline up any hill with ease and is comfortable at 55-60mph even with the standard 4.58 rear end.  

"Second tier" was linquistic shading, denoting a relative dimunition among big Lincoln adherents, the KB long considered the pinnacle.  You're taking it out of context, in which the K was praised.   As for SUVs, they are ridiculous; high center of gravity, cupholders for every seat.  As kids, we had station wagons, plenty comfortable.  And....we walked, biked everywhere.  You rarely saw a fat kid.  Every other classroom, perhaps one kid was  plump,  but not today's rampant morbid obesity,  medical researchers citing today's kids the first generation in human history that will live shorter lives than their parents, suffering diseases and ills in their 20s, 30s, once the province of those in their 60s, 70s.    Big vans with windows on pick up chassis.  Where's the "sport" part?

Out in my corporate 'burbs, we laugh at the urban cowboys in their pristine four-door pick up trucks.  You need a truck, rent one.   Auto designers, marketers would be daft  n o t   to take advantage of the peculiar domestic Walter Mittyism, unrequited testosterone.   But then some of us here gathered are sport car guys who got sidetracked by some of the more rational  "road cars," "pocket luxury cars" of the late '30s, '40s, who nonetheless have long experience with the heavy iron "Classic" fire trucks of the earlier '30s, able to appreciate them for what they are, while still seeing them as a mite comic opera, over the top offerings to snare what discretionary coin remained during the Depression by automakers unwilling or unable to engineer novel juniors.  

Safe to say you're not ordering one of these? 

Aye, lad.  A truer thing never surmised.  My Miata-driving girl thinks crossovers look like wheeled hamsters in heat.  "Crossover,"  like "sport... utility... vehicle,"  another bit of marketing whimsy for the having-it-all crowd.  Pick up trucks with four doors.   "Muscle" cars with automatic transmission, power steering, power brakes, some even with power windows.   Faith and begorrah. 

Abundantly content with my 77-year-old dragon.   But perhaps some here gathered might turn one of the below into a  Lincoln KB, Pierce, or Stutz DV32 this Thanksgiving, but we trust not in the circus wagon colors prevalent these days, perhaps free of white walls, radiator gargoyle to boot.  Understatement, less is more, weight is the enemy seem lost constructs with so many of the janitorial d' nonelegance bling set:

Su8overdriveNov 22, 2023

Out in my corporate 'burbs, we laugh at the urban cowboys in their pristine four-door pick up trucks.  You need a truck, rent one.   

After owning F150 XLT crew cabs for nearly 20 years, I will NEVER go back to a 2wd car again.  For one, I prefer having a pickup box with a cover as the spacious 'trunk' which is totally independent from the passenger compartment, and can be conveniently hosed out with water when necessary.  Because of that, I have no issues tossing in something big and still covered with grease I just bought at a swap meet for me, or someone else who may have driven a Miata to the swap meet that day.  If I need to carry something clean or 'nice', there is sufficient room in the rear seat area as the seat cushion hinges up, and out of the way, making a rather large carpeted space to carry it. Second, the four wheel drive is indispensable here in winter, especially when the light turns green, and no time is wasted when everyone in SUV's and four wheel drive vehicles can proceed through the light without wheelspin.  Most annoying is watching the guy in a car ahead sits there and spins its wheels, trying to get some traction on the ice before the light turns red.  Third, an F150, or similar, and full size SUV's has a far more sufficient capacity to tow a good sized trailer than a regular car does.  It is a huge asset, at least for me.  There are times one my NOT want to risk driving a nice vehicle like a '33 Lincoln KB to a meet where one has to white-knuckle it through a major metropolitan area like LA or Seattle, etc., to attend a show.  As well, I have hooked up the trailer to carry car frames to the DIY sandblasters, with smaller items in the box.  

Craig

I never understood why the Avalanche concept never caught-on more than it did.  The mid-gate and hardcover cargo area seemed to me to be the perfect answer for those who are otherwise buying 4-door, short-box 1/2-ton 4WD pickups.  I guess that's why i was not a marketing major... 

EmTee now that we are way off topic (Sorry Mike!) I will say the light truck market is so big that not unlike cars lots of choices for different needs.  I like the half door with a full 6 foot bed myself.  Room for the Dane to have her own special area and plenty of usable bed for doing truck things.  4X4 a must here also. And yes one can use a pick up and keep it pristine.  Why wouldn't you?