Car enthusiasts often flock to the cars with the highest horsepower numbers, loudest exhausts, or fastest Nürburgring lap times, but sometimes we want to be coddled, too. Life is all about compromise, and when you build a car that’s focused solely on providing the most comfortable experience possible, it usually comes at the sacrifice of other traits like agility or style. Or at least up until modern times; the levels of comfort, speed, safety, technology, and handling in new ultra-luxury vehicles would send someone from the ‘70s into a coma.
Despite decades of development and incomprehensibly expensive modern innovation, I think old American luxo-boats provide the highest levels of comfort ever achieved in a car, not to be topped until we finally produce the flying cars we’ve been promised since the ‘50s. The seats were La-Z-Boys, the steering had as much resistance and road feel as stirring a pot of water with a chopstick, and the suspension was so effective at isolating the humans inside from the harsh realities of the outside world it would give Kim Jong Un a run for his money.
The Malaise Era was good for one thing, and that was massive floaty cars with plush, quilted, tufted couches for seats. Modern cars claim to have quilted leather, but the marvelous machines of the Malaise Era had proper quilted seats with pillow-top designs like a luxury mattress. I say the most comfortable car ever built is probably the 1978 Lincoln Mark V Diamond Jubilee Edition. Launched to commemorate Ford Motor Company’s 75th anniversary, the Lincoln Mark V Diamond Jubilee Edition was the finest American luxury automobile money could buy. In this era, the word Nürburgring had probably never been spoken or heard in a Lincoln development office yet. Nothing came between the Lincoln Mark V and the ultimate in vehicular comfort.
But talk is cheap, and I’m just some weirdo who writes for a car blog. Let’s hear your answers, Jalopnik audience. What do you think is the most comfortable car ever built?