7th Feb 2013, 11:30

Yes - I too would recommend gauges for any older car. I have a set that gives me the basics: oil pressure and engine temperature. They're pretty cheap and easy to install.

7th Feb 2013, 12:02

Sure, on a commuter car you can put the seat all the way back in its track. Take the family to the beach or mountains, and it's an ordeal.

Also, what is practical to you may not be practical for a family with 2 or 3 children. Add some car seats. Or take a couple teens with your wife on a 1000 mile trip.

The other matter is many can afford a larger vehicle with a V8. Mileage has improved, but not everyone is strictly gas only. I like having a happy family not bickering in a cramped car. I also dislike driving with the seat at the midpoint.

These vehicles on this review are at their very best on a lengthy commute. Bring a couple of golf bags and even a single teen daughter's luggage on a trip to visit relatives. Maybe that's not an issue for the commuter going to work solo with nothing in the car. For many or most with families, it's not practical.

7th Feb 2013, 13:57

SUVs may be dying out where you live, but I see them in record numbers up here in New England. Most people who make decent money drive them around here. Also, remember too that people nowadays are having less kids, and they don't need the huge amount of room that an SUV offers.

And about the Lincoln commercial, I have to say that Ford thinks that the Lincoln MKZ will replace the Town Car as a flagship sedan, but it really won't. After reading several reviews, most critics agree that it really hasn't changed over the years, and offers very little over its Ford Fusion originator.

All of your posts seem intent on rewriting history. The Town Car was a huge hit until it got the bad restyling in 1998. The Crown Victoria and Grand Marquis continued to sell well until 2003, when the full-size market faded in favor of big SUVs. Back in the 1990s and early-2000s, the Panther platform was Ford's most profitable platform. Yet you talk like they were never popular. Get the facts straight before you start making such revisionist assumptions.

7th Feb 2013, 15:34

Please give actual interior dimensions of the "full-size" 80s and 90s cars you're stating are smaller on the inside than the new small and mid-size commuter cars, and your source. Just stating things on here does not make them true, and I guarantee you will not be able to find physical evidence to back up your claim, at least correct evidence.

By the way, a Ford Taurus and Chevy Celebrity don't count as full-size cars. Sorry. Do you happen to own a '55 Mercury that is 22 feet long? Just curious.

7th Feb 2013, 23:00

Before you try to twist around what my comment says again, please reread my last one.

I never said a large was practical, what I said was VERSATILE. Meaning easier to load, get in and out of, and good handling compared to a full-size car. They guzzle gas? Well of course they do, do you honestly think people don't know this before they purchase them?

The Chevy S-10? Again, please reread what said, I was comparing the INTERIOR, not reliability. Funny, we had a 4 cylinder S-10 in our family and it was sold at 140,000. Yes, I know all about the head gaskets; if you are careful with the coolant (like you are with your Merc.) this won't happen.

So what if there was a 90's Lincoln in your commercial. I have seen numerous car commercials do that when they come out with something new. It's not like they are saying their former line up was bad.

And please, for the last time, and this was a "debate" on this thread back in October, and over 320 comments ago; today's smaller cars do not have more interior space as far as head and legroom than older full-size cars from the very past. Please don't give me the Ford Focus hatchback comparison, because that includes the cargo space as part of the interior.

Again, I went on a road trip with a new Camry that was rented. Once again I sat in the back seat at one point, and drove the car; the interior room is nowhere near my Town Car, or another example, my father's Park Avenue. It's not like you were cramped, but it's not the space of a full-size.

In the end, why do you comment here when you never have anything nice to say about these cars, and comment like we are all morons?

8th Feb 2013, 05:34

I have had many company cars and rentals of all types since 1984. I can assure you full size cars are far superior to drive.

First is the luxury and appointments. The wheelbase and suspension are far softer and different. So is the sound deadening unless you want to crank up the sound system. When you spend most of your day in a car for business, it is a big deal.

I understand cars being designed inside out also affecting the looks of them from the outside. Like a big egg. Someone is also leaving Cadillac as an alternative out of here vs talking about the Toyotas as usual.

Lastly this review is of a special car. It's a car you can take the whole family out and enjoy. We can ride together, and take our parents to a nice dinner. It's not taking it on a bumper to bumper commute to work and back daily. Maybe sell the 55 Merc and get a nice, newer, very low mileage used Lincoln... totally loaded with power everything, ice cold A/C, and use it on a trip with parents and family. And keep the Toyota commuter vehicle for work. It might better enable you to understand why people love them.

8th Feb 2013, 16:26

Fine. Here's a comparison using front leg room as the factor.

1980 Lincoln Continental: 42 inches.

2011 Ford Focus: 41 inches.

You can easily look this up

So yes - technically you could say that "ha ha! I told ya so! It's 1 inch shorter!" But this above example more or less makes the case I was making before: Today's smaller cars, even some that are way, way smaller have just as much room as some of the seemingly gigantic cars that you would "think" would naturally be many, many times more spacious on the inside. Today's Focus is so dramatically smaller than a 1980 Continental, yet it has pretty much the same level of leg room as its much larger cousin.

That isn't to say that for their time these cars were not spacious. Small cars of that same period were in fact cramped on the inside. But it's more that the technology and design of car interiors has improved a lot since then, whereas back then more of the "car" had to be designed to structurally support itself, whereas today improvements in metallurgy, frame design, and materials has enabled designers and engineers to put more space in smaller cars. That was sort of the way things were going. I have repeatedly had guests ride in my wife's small car, and people routinely remark at "how much bigger" it is on the inside versus what they had imagined. Truth be known, our car fits 4 grown adults perfectly fine, and they even have ample additional room.

As far as having to have some Goliath SUV or vehicle to make the kids happy, well I guess we must have been breaking the rules when I was a kid, because we had an 85 Camry that we drove everywhere and even across country, and somehow it was absolutely perfectly fine, we weren't cramped, and there wasn't a space problem.

In fact, go around the world sometime and see what other people in other countries drive. We're probably about the most spoiled country when it comes to what we drive. So many people think it's almost their right, and that they simply must and can't live without some huge honkin' SUV (something that is usually advertised as something meant to go off-roading) that will never see anything more than pavement and grocery store parking lots. Sure - it's their right and I'm not suggesting we shouldn't have choices. It's a free country and people can buy whatever they want, which of course is how the US economy is supposed to work. But I'm also free to express an opinion, and in my opinion it's silly.