Last week, I reported on my decision to use E85 fuel in my 2009 Town Car for a week or so. How’d it go? Well, as it so happened, I accidentally veered off the road while texting and killed a

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OK, so what’s literally wrong with the picture is that TTAC needs a real graphics team. The larger, figurative problem: Ford is replacing its long-soldiering Lincoln Town Car, the granite-standard of livery transportation, with its unloved (5,701 sales year-to-date) MKT crossover. Say what you want about the old Town Car, at least it had a certain quietly anonymous gravitas. The MKT? Let’s just say that a stretched version will serve largely to make the adjective “cetacean” even more applicable to the baleen-snouted crossover. According to the Freep, Ford will offer

As someone who has driven over 300,000 non-livery, private-owner miles in various iterations of Ford’s Panther, TTAC’s Panther Appreciation Week struck a bittersweet chord for me. I’ve enjoyed seeing this versatile vehicle-from-another-era get the admiration and respect I believe it deserves, and the peek at the other side of the philosophical coin – courtesy of some Best & Brightest commentators (and Paul) – has also been interesting. But this tribute to the platform’s imminent demise has saddened me, as it highlights how the Panther has represented such a stoic constant on North American roads for so many years. Regardless, change is the only true constant, and it won’t be long before the pride of St. Thomas Assembly is irretrievably crushed by the ever-advancing juggernaut of modernity. Standing at the precipice of this retirement, I feel compelled to look at what the Panther has meant, both in my life, and in the market over these past three decades.

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Panther Appreciation Week rolls on with this look at the platforms sales since 1995 (sorry, our sales data doesn’t go back farther) compared to some key competition. As the last several years of the graph prove, large sedans were hit fairly hard by the “Carpocalypse,” but Panthers were in a terminal sales decline anyway. In the mid 90s, Ford was selling nearly 100k each of its Ford, Lincoln and Mercury-branded Panthers, but steady updates from large, cushy FWD competition like the Avalon slowly eroded sales.

Meanwhile, the 300/Charger combo from Chrysler looks to be the Panther of the 21st Century. Beloved by fleets and Donkophiles alike, the LX sedans beat the mass-market-branded large, RWD competition… such as it is. Heck, it even beat FWD rivals like the Avalon, the Genesis (21,889), the Lexus ES (48,485) and the Taurus (45,617) in 2009. And with the updated 2011 Charger in strong competition for police fleet business, Chrysler could just be building big, old-school, rear-drive sedans in the American style for some time to come. The Panther is dead… long live the LX?

Kudos to Baruth for having the stones to (re)join the Mehtas and countless other Pro-Panther families at the dark side: no small feat considering he’s a famous Audi/Porker racer extraordinare. Which points to a universal fact: it’s okay for car people to love the American Land Yacht, even if modern-day Detroit hopes we’d forget about the past. To that effect, check out two Lincoln Town Cars that often grace my driveway.

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[Here’s my other contribution to Panther Appreciation Week; my prior Panther CC is here]

In the long, strange and sometime tortured evolution of the classic large American sedan since WWII, there are exactly two moments when that species really hit the mark: The 1955 and 1977 Chevrolets. Everything else was fun to look at, fantasize about, ridicule, look back on with rose-colored glasses, or endlessly debate about. Yes, the fins of the late fifties were amusing, as was the build quality. And the endless bloat of the late sixties through the mid seventies may have generated some memorable childhood impressions, but cancer isn’t exactly a sustainable model upon which to base the family sedan. But just as the whole segment was about to metastasize into utter irrelevance, GM gulped the chemo, and built the finest and final expression of the genre. (Read More…)

I’m a team player, and I can get into the spirit of Panther Appreciation Week, even if it’s not the result of deep-rooted father imprinting (can we have an Opel Kadett Appreciation Week sometime?). That is, with the right Panther. And there is one that did manage to stir my blood in its time: (Read More…)

A crop of new police cars drew more than 400 law enforcement officials to Chrysler’s proving grounds in Chelsea today to see the Michigan State Police put the cars through acceleration, braking, high-speed handling and other tests.

This article isn’t gonna end well for Ford, and not just because it’s Panther Appreciation Week here at TTAC.

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The comments on yesterday’s review of the Caprice Classic Estate reminded me how fundamentally deep the Ford-vs-Chevy rivalry is among American auto enthusiasts. Even in the modern era, when both iconic brands are on the run from Toyota, Hyundai, and (soon) the Chinese, there’s still time to catch one’s breath and take a swing at the other guy.

So. The “Panther” platform is scheduled for termination within the next year or so. The General Motors B-body departed nearly a decade and a half ago. There will likely never be another American car of the size and proportions of those two. Which was your favorite? My thoughts, and a link to a credible source, after the jump.

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