Realm's 63 Custom Continental is Classic Cool

The 1960's Lincoln Continental is a true collector's classic. The suicide door-sporting land yacht was available in both convertible and hard-top variations, and was one of the last production cars to be designed by a single person. Originally designed as a T-bird replacement, the Conti's bold-yet-elegant design influenced many other manufacturers during it's reign.

Realm Audio's 1963 Conti is the perfect staging ground for Realm to demo their line of high-end speakers, amplifiers, and subwoofers. The large, wide-open cockpit offers plenty of room for the speakers and subs to breathe. But this big baby wasn't a perfect show car, it took a lot of work to get her to what you see today. Trevor Kaplan and Nathan Perkins of Realm did all of the work in-house at Realm's R&D facility. The restore took approximately 1 year, and the audio install about 400 hours over a four-week period. Click on the jump for the details and a few more pics.

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This Conti is half a century old so naturally it needed a little bit of work to get to show quality. L&G Autobody straightened and smoothed out the body and applied the Porsche charcoal gray and metallic silver paint in a classic two-tone design. The Realm crew slapped on a set of black and silver 22" Panther Octane wheels wrapped in Nitto NT420S rubber. Realm kept as much of the car stock in order to maintain the value (which is around $150,000 by the way), including the suspension which is a Lincoln Land factory restored suspension system. Under the hood, the guys fit a 430cid motor rebuilt by Extreme Automotive and mated it to a custom mandrel bent stainless steel exhaust system.

In the dash, Realm fabricated a custom trim ring using the original radio's faceplate as a template, ISO-mounting  the radio in place, and maintaining a somewhat factory look. The front stage consists of a custom 3-way Realm component system and is bi-amped. Realm doesn't actually make a 3-way, but the guys fabbed up a pair of front kicks from floating wooden rings, fiberglass, and vinyl, and dropped a set up of Realm LS5c 5.25" component speakers into the new pods.

To make the set a 3-way, 6.5" woofers were pulled from a set of LS6c 6.5" components and the Realm team designed a custom passive bandpass crossover to separate the frequencies. The midbass woofers were flushed into custom door pods made from wood and fiberglass, and the front stage was bi-amped, using a dedicated amp for the mids and a separate amp for the kick panel locations.

Realm used a set of LS6c 6.5" components in the rear, fabricating a similar door treatment to match the front doors. The rear speakers run on a separate amp and can be shut off for SQ competitions.

The gi-normous trunk plays home to three monsterous Realm LFT12-D4s. The 2.7cuft enclosure was created from MDF and dressed up with a Plexiglas face and top to show off the beefy woofers. Stainless steel sheets were added inside the box for accent, giving it a "tough industrial look". Apparently even though the trunk is large enough for multiple dead bodies, the Realm crew had a little trouble fitting everything in the trunk due to a large and intruding rear axle hump.

The amp rack holds a total of six Realm amplifiers. A total of three D500.1 Class-D monoblocks make up the low-end amplification, a single amp per sub running a 2-ohm load. For the mids and highs, three A300.2 two-channel amps were used, one to the kick panel speakers, a second drives the midbass door speakers, and the third to the rear door components.

To keep things quiet and rattle-free, a total of 306 sqft of Accumat sound deadening was laid throughout the car: 288 sqft of Accumat Hyperflex and 18 sqft of Accumat Barrier. All power and sound is handled via Scosche EFX gear.

Realm did a fantastic job turning this true classic into a modern show car. Their design doesn't detract from the car's classic lines, and the added sound and style improved on the already stunning looks. Elwood Engel would approve.