A 1995 Lincoln Mark VIII isn’t supposed to be a drag car, but that suggestion did little to deter Marc Wesler from buying and pouring his money and efforts into one.
Long, wide, curvy, and unmistakably different from the usual Camaro-and-Mustang crowd, the Mark VIII stands out in a crowd. “Anytime you unload it, people stop and look,” Wesler says. “Even guys who aren’t Ford people think it’s cool.”
The car already had a history before Wesler got it. Originally built in the Chicago area, it once ran as a big-block nitrous car driven by legendary “Animal Jim” Feurer, then later campaigned by Gene Deputy with a Windsor-headed twin-turbo small-block combination on the East Coast. By the time Wesler bought it as a roller, it had been through multiple other owners and iterations and was a bit rough.
The rebuild was a ground-up, rotisserie effort with his father, a longtime Ford mechanic, who helped bring the car back together over several years, even while battling Parkinson’s. Wesler doesn’t overstate it, but the project clearly meant something to his father.
“My dad was in a wheelchair by that point, but he was out there every day working on it,” he says. “I really think building this car is what kept him alive. He’d go out in the shop and weld and grind on it. He was a mechanic for 42 years, and he went from working on a car all day and night, but this illness took his ability to do that away. In the end, his brain had to work through my hands.”
What they ended up with is a true race car underneath a body nobody expects. The Lincoln sits on a 6.0-certified chromoly chassis with a four-link, a Strange Engineering center section and axles, and RC Components wheels. It’s an all-steel car (minus the hood) with original glass, and unlike most cars at this level, the interior is intentionally still very original in appearance.
Power comes from a 514 cubic inch big-block Ford with aluminum “A” heads and a four-barrel carburetor, paired with a Powerglide and a fabricated 9-inch rear with 40-spline axles. At around 3,100 pounds with driver, the car has run into the 5.80s, making it a solid bracket car. “It’ll take whatever you want to throw at it,” Wesler says.
The big Lincoln has fully functional running lights, turn signals, dome lights, and all, along with a cooling system feeding the factory steel block, combined with many of the creature comforts of the original factory car such as the trim, door panels, carpet, headliner, dash, and working power windows that Marc and his father painstakingly reimagined in this racey version, it has all the makings of a street cruiser or a stellar drag-and-drive machine.
Wesler, a co-founder of Fuel Factory, lives just a short drive from U.S. 131 Motorsports Park in Michigan, and has been putting the car through its paces at weekend bracket events since its completion, racing alongside his son, his three older brothers, nephews, and his father-in-law in what is very much a drag racing family affair.
While the big Lincoln is certainly loaded with memories of his father, Wesler has the car on the market, noting that it “has served its purpose.” Now, he’s writing a new chapter with his own son as they work hand in hand to build up a recently-acquired tube-chassis Ford Ranger. With that, someone new will get to grab up a great car and an equally great conversation piece.
It may not be the conventional choice, but that’s the appeal. The Lincoln does exactly what Wesler intended: it gets noticed, and it works.
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