it's the end of the line for this traditional six-passenger American sedan.
In a recent posting on Green Cabs, I promised a follow up on the radical changes in American cities’ street scenes that are coming.
For more than three decades, the taxi market has been dominated by the “full-sized” Ford Crown Victoria, with its V8 engine, rear-wheel-drive and heavy-duty frame mounted underneath. Attesting to Crown Vics “bullet- proof” reliability reputation most of those in service are former police cruisers, disposed of by the cops when they felt their service life was over (or when the agency’s budget permitted).
Both taxi and police fleet managers are familiar with these cars and experienced in maintaining them. In one state where the attorney general banded together with plaintiff lawyers for an ill-fated attempted shakedown of Ford on alleged safety issues, the state police defied the AG. Indeed, when Crown Vic Police Interceptors have outlived their taxi second life, their reputation is such, according to a West Coast fleet administrator, that they may be exported to other countries for continued service in either taxi or police fleets.
I do not know about cars having nine lives, but three lives are certainly beyond expectations.
However, this is all coming to an end. Ford has announced that it will permanently close its St. Thomas, Ontario, assembly plant in September 2011, ending production of the Crown Vic (which has been sold only to police and taxi fleet sales for several years). This also means the demise as well as of the Mercury Grand Marquis favored by retirees and the Lincoln Town Car that forms the basis of most limo fleets and executive cars.
It is remarkable that these cars, known internally at Ford as the Panther family, have lasted since their introduction in the fall of 1978 as 1979 models. At their termination, the Big Fords favored for police cars and cabs will have been in the U. S. and Canadian market for 33 years. That is longer than the Model T’s 19 years’ production or the VW Beetle’s 30 sales years in the U. S.
So this raises the question, What is going to replace the Crown Vic in taxi service? (We’ll get to the police car market later.)
The answer is up in the air.
As we pointed out in the report on Green Cabs, the New York Taxi and Limousine Commission is looking at several alternatives, and may be leaning to Ford Escape Hybrids, if for no other reason than Mayor Mike Bloomberg, reportedly, likes them. San Francisco and Los Angeles also have Escape Hybrids in their taxi fleets, though not as many as NYC.
New York streets and cab drivers can be very rough on cars. Everyone knows that the Crown Vic has stood the test of time. The fact that so many Escape Hybrids are NYC taxis (2,459 plus 6 Mercury Mariner clones) suggests they have been tough enough. Their rear seat shoulder space is nearly three inches wider than that of a Prius, but enough less than a Crown Vic that three riders still might feel squeezed. Further, all NYC Crown Vic cabs feature stretch bodies affording additional rear compartment length to accommodate the shield on the back of the front seat to protect drivers from robbers. New York allows an alternative to the shield, a continuous-loop video camera on the dash pointed rearward, which works OK on an Escape (or on any other smaller than CV cab). I’ve heard that some passengers object to the high floor height of an Escape, which after all was designed not as a taxi but as an “outdoorsy” compact SUV.
In any event, the vehicle that Ford is pushing now to replace the Crown Vic for taxicabs is a version of the European-designed, Turkish- built Ford Transit Connect. A recent Ford press release announced that the Transit Connect has been approved for taxi use in Boston.
The Transit Connect, designed as a panel delivery truck, offers some advantages and some disadvantages. When equipped as a taxi with rear seats, it is still huge inside, seemingly tall enough to accommodate passengers wearing stovepipe hats, with plenty of luggage space behind. With its standard 2.0-liter four-cylinder gas engine and automatic transmission, Ford claims the Transit Connect will provide a 30% gain in fuel economy “versus many of today’s traditional taxis” (meaning, of course, their own Crown Vic). In addition, that is without paying the considerable premium for gas-electric hybrid equipment.
What are some of the other alternatives that taxi fleets may consider? Again, we can look to NYC, the largest and most controlled of large taxi cities. In addition to a flock of Hybrids of various makes, New York taxi companies are experimentally operating minivans, of which the largest amount (1,289) are Toyota Sienna models. I think a minivan makes a lot of sense as a taxi, but the question remains, can they take it like a Crown Vic?
There are two other problems taxi operators face as the CVs are phased out. First, as noted, the Big Fords still have value even after their second lives as cabs (Note: NYC requires all cabs to be new, so that is their first life.) Second, their mechanics have decades of experience, service tools and parts maintaining them. This is offset by perhaps lower purchasing prices and obviously lower gasoline costs. Will the alternatives be as durable? Again, time will tell.
Another question has to be, What will Ford’s competitors come up with to fill the vacuum created by Ford pulling out of the market? We will speculate on that when we report on the police side of the disappearing Crown Vic story.
Nevertheless, one thing is sure: the streets of America, and the movie and TV scenes of them, will never be the same when the Crown Vic becomes a memory. Moreover, I haven’t even touched on the smaller and less visible limousine market.
Now a final few words about the closing of St. Thomas, which is triggering the demise of the Crown Vic, Grand Marquis and Town Car: with tooling long amortized and an outstanding workforce, the plant efficiently makes cars in credible volume. Sales of these cars in the first four months of 2010 came to nearly 27,000 with at best negligible marketing support, so why on earth would Ford consider ending it? The cars essentially have no competition in the marketplace. Most auto manufacturers would die for such an asset. Why, for instance, couldn’t Ford install its super new Ecoboost V6 engines in the Panthers (like the 2011 Mustang) to get outstanding fuel economy with better performance than the V-8?
The answer is that a forthcoming Federal motor vehicle safety standard requiring high-speed crash tests against simulated vertical poles simply makes it too expensive for the Dearborn automaker to keep the cars in production. To meet the standard, which may or may not have real-world crash injury-reduction value, a complete redesign is said to be required at huge cost for products that do not have the possibility of an enlarged market.
I have to wonder if NHTSA regulators, in their zeal to do good, have overlooked the economic aspects of their requirements. If the St. Thomas plant were in a state with senators of the reigning political party, would it be going down so readily?