Classic American Magazine 339 July 2019 Retour à l'édition précédente

Unbelievably, the show season is here with us already and so far we’ve been blessed with a pretty good summer. One’s always a little cautious about making such proclamations, as they are usually followed by biblical rain of the ‘40 days and 40 nights’ variety… hopefully not on this occasion!

Huw Evans has been saying it for years, but for me the penny finally has dropped; American car makers really are deserting the manufacture of
passenger cars in favour of trucks, SUVs and cross-overs, meaning if you want to buy a sedan in North America these days, you’ll likely be looking at a Camry or an Accord. How on earth has it come to this? When Ford ended
production of Panther platform favourites the Ford Crown Vic/Mercury Grand Marquis and Lincoln Town Car you could say the writing was on the wall. Buoyed by fleet sales to federal agencies, law enforcement and flflfleet buyers, these hoary old sedans offered great bang for buck, were roomy, comfortable, but most definitely a throwback to the heady days of big American sedans of yore.

Chevy had abandoned the body-on-frame, rear wheel drive and V8-powered formula when they dropped the Caprice in 1996, leaving Ford with a monopoly on these type of vehicles until they were discontinued in 2012. It’s a shame, as for many of us, they were the cars that started our love affair with American motoring; however, that’s progress, as they say, and just as the station wagon has yielded to the minivan, so too the once ubiquitous sedan has now been superseded by the SUV/cross-over.

On a happier note, Classic American’s Stars and Stripes show is taking place over the weekend of July 6 and 7 at Tatton Park, near Knutsford, Cheshire. It’s a fantastic event and if you’ve never attended, why not pop along, we’re sure you’ll have a blast!