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It was a Ferrari weekend, but Frank wouldn’t stand for it. Frank is my editor, and something of a curmudgeon. He’s into political correctness. He thinks Ferrari is too rich, too excessive for this column.

Can you believe it?

This used to be one of the few columns in any newspaper that openly discusses sex.

The tested Ferrari 456M is nothing but sex. It’s motorized Viagra, a candidate for a Kenneth Starr subpoena. But Frank thought it would be more appropriate if I wrote about the 1999 Lincoln Town Car, which I also drove. So, that’s what I’m gonna do.

The 1999 Lincoln Town Car is not sexy, but it provides enough room to start a family. Heck, it offers enough room to house one, too. You can seat six adult bodies in a Town Car. You can squeeze two into a Ferrari, assuming that they aren’t overweight.

The Town Car is a pajamas car. The Ferrari 456M is a bikini. I don’t wear pajamas. I like bikinis. But pajamas make more sense. So does the Town Car.

For example, I had to pick up a buddy at the airport. She travels with big pieces of luggage. She would have been impressed had I met her in the Ferrari. But we would have had to leave her luggage behind, because the Ferrari’s trunk is tiny.

By comparison, you could drown in the Town Car’s trunk. It’s deep and wide and holds up to 20.6 cubic feet of stuff. In this case, size does matter. But it matters not when it comes to engines.

Take the Ferrari 456M. It comes with a 48-valve, V-12, 436-horsepower engine. We’re talkin’ “Yeeooww!!” power. But it’s mostly useless on U.S. city streets and highways with strict speed limits.

The Town Car comes with a much more modest engine — a 4.6-liter, single-overhead-cam, electronically fuel-injected V-8 designed to produce 220 horsepower at 4,500 rpm and 290 pound-feet of torque at 3,500 rpm. That’s still more power than most of us will ever use. But it’s more psychologically acceptable — which brings up the matters of stress and excitement.

You get no stress and virtually no excitement with the Town Car. It’s a big, comfortable, rear-wheel-drive automobile with a lighter-than-air steering feel and a four-wheel-independent suspension system that seems to make bumps, potholes, ruts and other roadway annoyances disappear.

You can park the Town Car in almost any decent lot or garage. No one will disturb it. People see it as just another executive car — “a cab for Wall Street lawyers,” said a Wall Street lawyer who thinks that “Town Car” is a synonym for “limo.”

But, ah, the rear-drive Ferrari 456M! It’s a torrid affair. You’ve got to be careful where you take it. It attracts too much attention; and it’s something of a fair-weather friend on rough roads. But it provides thrills aplenty on smooth, isolated roads with many twists and turns where it adeptly blends with curves. Smooth roads, however, are few.

Thus, the Ferrari is something of an illusion, particularly at a price exceeding $200,000. The Town Car is more real in a wo rld where reality is based on accessibility. Fewer than 200 new Ferrari cars are shipped to the United States each year. By comparison, Ford Motor Co. produces about 94,000 Town Cars annually.

And if you can’t afford to buy a Town Car, no sweat. You can always rent one as a cab or limo.