Rare 1946 Lincoln Continental brought out of storage with the last thing you'd expect under the hood

This 1946 Lincoln Continental was recently recovered from a garage where it had been ‘sleeping’ for a long time.

There’s one major difference between this car today and the way it was when it left the factory nearly 80 years ago, and that’s the engine.

But this is probably a good thing.

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In the past, American cars used to have extremely large engines in terms of displacement or the number of cylinders available, but they were often underpowered.

The Lincoln-Zephyr 292 cu in (4.8-liter) V12 that originally powered the car you see here only made 120 horsepower.

And this didn’t just apply to Lincoln, it was like this everywhere else.

Through the years, engines got smaller but more powerful.

The Ford Mustang is a good example of that.

The bog-standard Ford Mustang from 20 years ago was fitted with a 4.0-liter V6, putting out 210 horsepower.

The model that replaced it ten years later was available with a much smaller engine, a 2.2-liter EcoBoost, but more power, 310hp.

These days we’ve got a battery-powered Mustang, too.

But that’s probably a different conversation.

As for this Lincoln, no one knows what happened to the original V12, but we do know it now comes with a V8.

The V8 was sourced from a Ford, and it delivers over 200 horsepower – or at least that’s what it would’ve done when it was new.

Either way, we’d call that an upgrade.

Especially because this 1946 Lincoln Continental isn’t exactly a featherweight car but, at 4,000+ lbs (1,800+ kg), it is still significantly lighter than most SUVs and trucks today.

It is actually (nearly) half the weight of a Cybertruck.

After a few decades of relative ‘darkness’, so to speak, Lincoln is gearing up to take the spotlight again.

The American automaker has recently unveiled some pretty spectacular concepts, such as the Model L100.

The future looks bright.