One of the most well known names in autodom is poised to get its first major overhaul in nearly thirty years. Fords Crown Victoria, introduced in 1979, has had only minor changes since its introduction, but a new plan by Ford to overhaul the crown jewel of its fleet is apparently in the offing. Thanks to government assistance Australian to be exact the new Crown Victoria will be a clean break from the current model and will help to spawn additional models for siblings Mercury and Lincoln. Yes, you may not have considered a Crown Victoria up to this point, but the coming new Crown Vic may just change your mind about that.
You have to go back all the way to the late 1970s to when downsizing was a term used by the auto industry to describe a shell game where large cars were dropped down a notch in size to sit on a platform slightly smaller than the previous model. Indeed, throughout the 1970s Fords full size offerings the LTD/Galaxie 500 were huge beasts of burden. By the time the then new Galaxie 500 Crown Victoria was released at the end of the decade, Ford was playing catch up to General Motors who had earlier mastered the whole downsizing strategy.
Initially,...