Zimmer Golden Spirit Sedan

Zimmer Corporation told its shareholders in August 1983 that a production prototype of the limousine was finished. The Fort Lauderdale News announced its debut for the South Florida Auto Show on 5 November 1983, and on 15 December, Robert P. Zimmer wrote in the company's newsletter, Zimmer began shipping the 1984 line-up, "the highlight being the introduction of the all new four door personal limousine". The newsletter pictured it in black beside the coupé, the Formal and the convertible, and showed its rear console, with a small television set into wood and leather and fittings for glasses. It was "Scheduled to be produced in limited quantities". The specification below gives the price Forbes reported in September 1983.

For the 1986 models, announced in November 1985, the Personal Limousine listed at $88,650, and a dealer gave $91,650 in July 1986. In September 1987 the Miami Herald reported that it had sold for "nearly $100,000" and had been "taken out of production last year", because it took too long to build.⁠source 4​source 1​source 5​source 6​source 7

The Sedan first appears in the 1986 line-up announced in November 1985, at $69,650, when the Classic, Elegance and Cabriolet coupés listed at $64,900. A dealer gave $73,650 in July 1986. On the price list of 1 December 1986 it carries no price at all: the "Four Door Sedan" is "On Order", with a footnote, "(Limited availability—requires approval in advance)". The same list names only two other cars, the QuickSilver and the Golden Spirit Classic.

Whether the Sedan was a model of its own or the limousine without its rear console, the sources do not say. The difference in price, $19,000 for 1986 by our arithmetic, suggests that the limousine carried a good deal more.⁠source 2​source 8​source 3

What the four-doors were built on is not known. No newsletter, price list, press report or other source read names the donor. The two-door Golden Spirit kept its Mustang's doors, roof and cabin, and Ford built no four-door Mustang in those years, so the four-doors cannot have been made the same way; whether Zimmer built a longer cabin with four doors or used another car, no source read says. No dimensions or weights were found either, so the specification below holds only what is known: the years, the price of 1983, the body and the doors.

How many were built is not known. No factory figure is known, and no production number of an original four-door appears in any source read. The limousine was meant to be made "in limited quantities", and by December 1986 the Sedan needed "approval in advance", so there were few.

There had been no four-door Zimmer before the Personal Limousine. After it, the limousine was dropped in 1986 and the Sedan was on order only by December, and the plant closed when Zimmer Corporation filed for Chapter 11 on 10 May 1988. No source read records a version of either car for another market. Paul Zimmer pitched the limousine, as Forbes quoted him above, against the ordinary limousines its buyers were used to, and the Miami Herald, looking back in 1987, remembered it for its price and the time it took to build. Another company took up the same idea 15 years later, on another car.⁠source 5​source 7​source 3​source 12​source 6

From 2001 to 2011, Art Zimmer's unrelated company, Zimmer Neo-Classic Motor Car Co. of Syracuse, built four-door Golden Spirits on new Lincoln Town Cars, and it too called its sedan a "personal limousine". There were three: the 4-Door Sedan, first built in 2001; the 4-Door Convertible, added in 2002; and the long 4-Door "L", from 2004. In 2011 the 4-Door Convertible listed at $194,900. Lincoln ended the Town Car in 2011, and the four-doors ended with it. Their page describes them with the rest of the revival's cars.⁠source 10​source 13​source 11​source 14