Love the ovoid exhaust openings. The tail lights remind me a little of our 1956 Plymouth Savoy. I guess it's the fin with the circular reflector...

About this time, Studebaker was thinking about buying the '56 Lincoln tooling and dies from Ford and rebadging it as a Packard.

That's true; the '57 Packard was hopefully going to be a reskinned '56 Lincoln. Sadly, that didn't work out, and the '57 Packard ended up being a thinly disguised Studebaker. It wasn't a bad car, but it was a sad excuse for a Packard. I've always thought that the Lincoln platform would've made a much nicer Packard than the Studebaker.

As much as I like the 1960s Lincolns with the so-called "suicide doors" and the beautiful Continentals from the 1940s, the '56 Lincoln is my favourite Lincoln of them all. It's as classy as a Cadillac, but leaner and more purposeful in it's presence.

I've read that it's design was influenced by the manta rays and other underwater creatures that Ford's chief designer Bill Schmidt saw during a deep sea fishing trip a few years before.

And, painted in shades like Lilac, Wisteria or Yellow like this top-of-the-line Premiere, a 1956 Lincoln was a most impressive sight indeed.