Last Ford Crown Victoria rolled off!

The Ford Crown Victoria, the model that have been popular with taxi fleets and police departments for 32 years, rolled off a Canadian assembly line Thursday.

It’s the end of the Crown Victoria and other Panther Platform vehicles like Mercury Grand Marquis and Lincoln Town Cars which have sold almost 10 million units since 1979.

According to a report by CNN, demand for better fuel economy and performance has choked off sales of the the Ford Crown Victoria over the years. The Town Car and Crown Victoria get just 24 miles per gallon on the highway, a figure being bested by large three-row SUVs today.

In a statement by Ford Canada, the sales of Crown Victoria has declined dramatically in the last decade.

“Production levels at the [Ontario, Canada] plant have declined by 60 percent in the last decade as customer preferences shifted to smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles,” Ford said.

With the last car rolling of the line Thursday, all production will stop.

The end of production of America’s favorite cop car and taxi cab will most likely put 1,200 people out of work. It’s destination? The Middle East, where Ford Crown Victorias are apparently a popular candidate for lowrider modifications.

Here is the Wikipedia entry for the Ford Crown Victoria:

The Ford Crown Victoria (commonly nicknamed the Crown Vic) was a rear-wheel drive full-size car first produced by the Ford Motor Company for the North American market in the mid-1950s. Its current incarnation has been in production since 1992 at Ford’s St. Thomas Assembly plant. While the Crown Victoria shares its platform and components with the Lincoln Town Car, it shares almost no exterior sheet metal or interior parts. Beginning with the 2008 model year, it has been officially available only for fleet sales, mainly in police and taxi form, as well as for rental car companies.

The Crown Victoria (along with its Mercury and Lincoln counterparts) is the only full-frame rear-wheel-drive passenger car currently built in North America. It is also one of the few surviving US vehicles still in production with features such as the column-mounted gear shift and a two-bench, six-passenger seating layout; a format which was dominant for US-manufactured vehicles from the 1950s onward, but nowadays has otherwise largely been replaced by the two front-bucket layout popularized by imports.

Since the 1996 discontinuation of the Chevrolet Caprice, the Crown Victoria has held a near-monopoly as a police pursuit vehicle in North America, despite being based on the Panther platform, which has seen two revisions since it debuted in 1979. While newer front-wheel drive platforms may have been popular among consumers, they have not challenged the Crown Victoria’s dominance as a taxicab, fleet vehicle and police car where durability, cost and performance are valued over fuel efficiency. The Crown Victoria remains popular for these applications due to its rear-wheel drive layout and V8 powertrain, both beneficial to police driving techniques. As one of the few remaining passenger cars with body-on-frame construction, it is rugged and enables repairs after minor accidents without the need to straighten the chassis – an important benefit for a car frequently used by police forces for PIT maneuvers. However, the Chevrolet Impala and Dodge Charger, despite their unibody construction, have started to challenge this dominance with some significant adoptions among police and taxi fleets since their introduction. Ford Crown Victoria is currently the most common car appearing in movies and series worldwide.

Last Ford Crown Victoria photos courtesy of Ford Facebook Page