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Marking the end of an era that stretches back virtually to the dawn of the motorcar in America, the last body-on-frame, rear wheel drive sedan from an American car company rolled off the line last month in Ontario, Canada.
Workers from the St. Thomas Assembley Plant documented the last Crown Victoria produced on September 15 on their Facebook Page. Although sales to retail consumers in the United States stopped with the 2008 model year, fleet sales continued to police departments and taxi companies, both of which value the cars for their rugged durability.
Ford introduced the Panther platform in 1979 with the LTD, which later became LTD Crown Victoria and later just Crown Victoria. The redesigned Mercury Marquis debuted the same year and Lincoln models followed for 1980. All Panthers had V-8 engines, varying over the years with different displacements and valvetrain layouts, with the last car equipped with a 4.6 liter overhead camshaft V-8. The Crown Victoria name itself dates back to 1955, when it was first applied to the top-of-the-line version of the Fairlane.
Previously, the last Grand Marquis rolled off the line on January 4 of this year and the last Town Car met a similar fate more recently on August 29. As well as marking the end of the body-on-frame sedan for American manufacturers, the end of the Panther platform also marks the last American rear-wheel-drive sedan with six-passenger bench seating.
Although downsizing and the shift to unibody and later front-wheel drive platforms had begun decades earlier, the end of both these models, although separated by a decade and a half, marks a major turning point in American car design and production. | 
JUST IN - 1997 Lincoln Eagle
DEATH OF THE CROWN VIC
