Everyone needs to stop talking about how great of deals Mark VIII's are.
I don't need the temptation to buy one. I already entered the 10 step program to not buy one and I am starting to want one again.....
I’m on my Fourth G-body, and I love them, but I had a 1995 Lincoln Mark Viii LSC. Picked it up at 80k miles in great shape, but already needed ball joints and endlinks. (Terminal weak points). I did ball joints end links and bushings. I replaced the “forever grease” parts with grease or fittings. I put a homemade but well designed cold air intake on it, Kooks longtube headers, cat delete, custom x-pipe 2.5 inch exhaust all the way out to titanium mufflers. I had a chip burned for it, and with a 175 shot from a Nos Noszle direct port kit, I won the 13 second class at fun ford weekend up in gainsville back in the early 2000s. Then the rear suspension started making noise. By 92k miles, I walked out to my car to go to class one morning and the frame was on the ground. It pumped back up enough that I was able to drive it around for another couple of weeks, but I had to convert it over to a T-bird fixed spring setup (or pay thousands to replace air springs and r&r the pump. Then the strut rod bushings failed, so I replaced them. Then the transmission started slipping at 96k. The a/c quit at 99k, the brake booster failed, then 2 remained replacements failed in 8 months.
Beautiful car. Spectacular handling car, especially with the upgrades. With all of the bushings and fresh ball joints, upgraded sway bars, the fixed springs, and some 255/55/17 kuhmo ecstas, I used to destroy sn95 cobras and 4th gen f-bodies on on ramps (there are a few 2 lane on ramps around west palm my car club used to play on). Then the toys started to break. Some sensor failed in the door, which caused the dome light to be on all the time. Window regulator and power drivers seat failed at the same time. Abs light failed. Traction control started doing some weird stuff.
I ended up parting it out circa 2009. The motor is still in my buddies 98 cobra chugging along.
My opinion of those cars is that they were a status symbol for older upper middle management folks. Enough power to keep up with kids in lt1 F-bodies of the day, a suspension technology, and luxury, to convince bmw and Acura customers to cross shop it (which they did), and more than 60 percent of the Mark viiis we’re leased, which was how they were pushed. I’m absolutely positive that the original owners, and to an extent probably the second owners of those vehicles were super pleased with them.
I also think they realistically had about a 7 year 80k mile design life. By 100k miles, you will be pouring money into the car, even if you’re babying it. Things will be going wrong.
For comparisons sake, even though it’s for sure apples to oranges, my first g-body was an 85 Monte Carlo cl, 1 piece bench, manual window manual lock car with the 4.3 liter tbi v6 in it. My grandmother was the original owner and put 80k miles on it before my dad bought it from her and he put another 120k miles on it. I got it at 16 with 200k on the clock, at 220k, I put a Mike Lis (Motörhead Mike) spec vortec 355 in it with a t56 using one of John Bezdel’s pedals with the bronze bushings. I copied Mike’s build spec down to the letter, and drove it for the next 7 years. At 300k miles I parted it out to by books for law school. Original rear end, never had to repair any accessories. Only thing I ever did was change fluids and brakes.
