Long live the Ford Crown Victoria

The Ford Crown Victoria is dead. With the final example rolling out of the assembly line at Ford’s Thomas Assembly Plant in Ontario, Canada, one of the longest chapters in US motoring history has come to a close. It has been around for more than three decades with the same Panther platform that started duty way back in 1979. The greatest testimony to the model’s popularity was the fact that it lasted 25 years since Ford decided to phase it out and replace it with the Taurus. And last month when Ford announced end of production, it saw sales shoot up 140 per cent compared to August 2010 as fleet customers, especially police departments across the US, began to stock up on the model. The last car, a white model with a special interior package has been reportedly bought by a customer in Saudi Arabia, where it’s been popular together with the Lincoln Town Car, with which it shares the same platform. However, it’s going to be many, many more years before the legacy of this rear-wheel-drive, body-on-frame V8-powered legend is forgotten. With hundreds of thousands of them plying the roads in the form of taxis and cop cars, the Crown Victoria won’t be out of sight anytime soon.