For the Big Event, It's This Town's Car

For starters, the city of New York has its eye on the Town Car. In an ongoing effort to green up the city's taxis and black cars, Mayor Michael Bloomberg's administration last year implemented rules that will phase out aging vehicles, and requires some cars to get at least 25 miles to the gallon (city) by 2013. The latter measure would hit the Town Car hardest. To have any hope of meeting the new mileage standard, Ford would essentially have to turn the Town Car into a Prius. The company says it's still talking to the city about modifying the plan.

But the Town Car may die long before that.

Although it hasn't officially declared the Town Car dead, Ford has made no commitment to produce it after the current model year, stirring concern within the black-car business. Fleet purchases are still strong, the company says, but fleet sales don't pay the rent, accounting as they do for only about a third of the 15,700 Town Cars sold annually. Rather, the car's sliding retail sales and aging demographics (the average buyer is 70 years old) have been arguing against continued production for years. "The Town Car," declares company spokesman Schirmer, "is not the future of Lincoln."

Instead, Lincoln is pushing a smaller, somewhat sleeker luxury sedan called the MKS as its new flagship.

"In a lot of ways, the Town Car isn't a Lincoln anymore," Schirmer says. "It's a Town Car, not a Lincoln Town Car. People say, 'What did you get picked up in at the airport today?' And the answer is, 'a Town Car.' They don't even say 'Lincoln.' "

True. But someday we'll gaze up at the Town Car on display at the Museum of Hydrocarbon Atrocities and sigh. Gas guzzler? Road hog? Leviathan? Yeah, it's all that.

But inaugural week may provide one last shining reminder of what else the Town Car was: a classic.