[REVIEW] Tomica Ford Continental Mark IV

Tomica time, Land of the Rising Sun-day is here again. The last installment was traditional JDM luxury, today we examine traditional USDM luxury. This is Tomica 4-1, the “Ford” (Lincoln) Continental Mark IV. This casting entered the range in April 1976, and is a real period piece:

Sharp eyes may recognize this casting from one of my earliest reviews - I kind of like it and it was in front of me, so I decided to do it again years later. These personal luxury dinosaurs, with their emissions-strangled (yet still smooth and torquey) big block engines, ruled the roads until a couple of gas crunches and quickly unfashionable massive size made them obsolete. The Tomica Mark IV is a lovely casting, with excellent realism shining through with fine line casting detail and accurate proportion. Scale is claimed to be 1:77, a little small but likely accurate - the real world car is a land yacht, and the casting isn’t especially huge. As this is golden age Tomica, this model features the springy suspension, crisp glazing, and snappy door action we all enjoy. From all angles, this is a quality item:

Doors open to reveal a detailed interior with realistic seating and an accurate steering wheel:

Front and rear have similar high quality detail (notice “Ford” on the license plate, not sure why Tomica did this):

The base is metal, which adds heft and contains ample technical and identifying detail:

This example is fortunate enough to live in an original F-series box:

I am happy to have this casting in my collection. I somewhat like this car, as my mom had the Ford Thunderbird counterpart when I was a little kid, and some of my earlier car memories are of that big old cruiser. My reference book shows 15 variants, I have this and one in yellow. If anyone else likes this, good news, this version anyway is relatively common and shouldn’t break the bank, widely sold as a Pocket Cars in this pleasing blue and white:

Some 1:1 images from momentcar.com, smclassiccars.com, and buffalocars.com: