Lincoln Continental With Rear-Hinged ‘Suicide Doors’ Rendered

The Lincoln Continental is floundering in the showroom. Given that, and considering how close Ford reportedly is to pulling the plug on its other full-size sedan, the Taurus, it shouldn’t come as a great surprise that Ford is allegedly planning to pull the plug on the Lincoln Continental once the current, tenth-generation version reaches the end of its life cycle.

But before that happens, word is that the Lincoln Continental will be gaining rear-hinged “suicide doors“. Whether that’s a desperate attempt to inject fresh excitement into the flailing luxury sedan, or simply a novel feature that’s been in the pipeline since the very beginning, is unknown, although an anonymous source tells us it’s the latter. Regardless, suicide doors – not exactly common on modern production automobiles – would give the Lincoln Continental a unique functional and aesthetic feature, and establish a link with the luxury sedan’s lauded past.

Recently, Motor1 commissioned a rendering of the current, tenth-generation Lincoln Continental with a set of rear-hinged suicide doors opening up to the back row. You can find the rendering on that outlet’s website.

Beside looking cool, it’s generally accepted that rear-hinged doors like these offer easier passenger access to the cabin, which could prove especially popular in markets where well-heeled owners tend to be chauffeured rather than do the driving themselves – markets like China, for instance. In Motor1‘s commissioned rendering, the Continental still has a beefy B-pillar between the front and rear doors, which would likely be essential to passing side-impact and roof-strength crashworthiness tests. Plenty of concept cars have suicide doors with no B-pillar, giving them a nice, expansive aperture, but of course, that’s what makes them concepts.

It’s unknown when the Lincoln Continental will be updated to include a pair of rear-hinged suicide doors, but we expect them to drop in time for the 2020 model year.