First Chinese car to go on sale in US, last Crown Vic built.

[Sephirius]

But you miss the point.

This is likely the last affordable V8, Rear-Wheel Drive, Fullsize car that will be built. It certainly is the last body on frame saloon in existence, the last 4 door to seat six, and lastly is tough as nails and easy to maintain. Never mind the fact that it has been in production for more than a 1/4 of human history since the automobile was invented, and you begin to see why it was so significant.

[Stark]

Maybe if you built cars for the markets you dismiss your manufacturers wouldn't go out of business?

The end of 'cheap' v8s being a bad thing is pretty funny. Why should anyone care?

[Sephirius]

Maybe if you built cars for the markets you dismiss your manufacturers wouldn't go out of business?

The end of 'cheap' v8s being a bad thing is pretty funny. Why should anyone care?

Because it's one of the best engines for efficiency, power, compactness, and smoothness.

And it's not a weedwhacker sounding like a four cylinder. And let's face it, what's more American than a V8?

Note: if cars are nothing more than transportation to you, this thread isn't for you.

[JointStrikeFighter]

Conveniently for ignorant old seph Australia have been making arguably better affordable V8 RWD cars for decades now and are unlikely to stop

eg

[Stark]

Note: if cars are nothing more than transportation to you, this thread isn't for you.

I think you'll find the nature of the products are irrelevant, since the topic is economics.

Wanking to V8s is not a compelling reason to manufacture an unprofitable line, no matter how small your dick is.

JSF, I'm not sure HSVs are really 'affordable'. It's just a fact that beyond the bogans, most people choose V Falcons and Commodores anyway, because they're way cheaper to run. Even the silly performance types spread into V6, because V8s just suck too much gas.

[tim31]

Conveniently for ignorant old seph Australia have been making arguably better affordable V8 RWD cars for decades now and are unlikely to stop

I tend to wear blue come Bathurst(only V8 race I'll watch these days), but geez the E series is a good looking car.

I felt a pang of national pride every time I saw a MonaroGTO or CommodoreG8 last year when I was in the States.

[MKSheppard]

*snip picture*

Looks like a typical Japanese sports car. This is supposed to impress me?

Maybe if you built cars for the markets you dismiss your manufacturers wouldn't go out of business?

Actually, the Panther Platform was deliberately starved. Nobody in Ford liked it -- it's last mild update was in 2003; and only because a senior executive at the time used to run the Panther side of the business.

Turns out if you don't update a brand for almost an entire decade, the only large sales will come from commercial/fleet owners? Speaking of that; I suspect in about five years, we'll see rumors of a modern remake of Panther -- since both the engine and frame are the longest lasting on the market -- you can expect a Panther to do 200-500k miles easily in taxi/fleet service, and in the hands of a Cop, they generally last 50k miles; which is impressive considering how well US Cops treat their transmissions.

[tim31]

*snip picture*

Looks like a typical Japanese sports car. This is supposed to impress me?

Haha actually Holdens didn't start to look like that until GM exec Bob Lutz added his influence.

[SVPD]

The Crown Victoria was probably pretty much doomed from the moment the Charger and the newer version of the Impala became popular as police cars.

I can't speak to the Impala; never drove it, but just looking at it, it looks like it should get better gas mileage, good for municipal budgets. The charger is also smaller and lighter and might get equal or better gas mileage in regular driving.

The Charger definitely performs better in pursuits IMO, however, although I can tell you other LEOs may have different opinions. The Charger definitely accelerates better, and I felt like it held the road better in a tight turn. I drove the charger during a training event where the object was to chase the instructor (also in a sedan; they had a mix of Chargers and Crown Vics). The lead vehicle was a Tahoe; it would start out chasing for the first 1.5 laps, and then halfway through the second lap the sedan would take over, to simulate handoff of pursuit from the larger Tahoe to the Sedan, which is better suited for pursuits. This occured on a straightaway that was.. oh about 1000 meters long or so.

Anyhow, when my turn came to pass the Tahoe, it was just amazing how much power the Charger had. I had been following at 60mph, by the time I passed and pulled in behind the instructor I was over 100mph and then it braked quite smoothly to make the turn after the straightaway. I was very impressed. It performed very well in the night pursuit portion as well; the instructors really went all out, and the Charger really held the road even when I reached the limit of my driving ability; eventually I just had to slow down because the instructor was just a better driver than me. That's why he's an instructor, of course.

On the other hand I've driven the Crown Victoria in a real life pursuit and during training, and it never performed as well. Granted, the one I drove in real pursuit was pretty old when I did it, but the conditions were actually very similar to the track (it was night, deserted streets, with a long straightaway and a few sharp turns, dry weather) and the newer ones I drive in training just didn't seem to handle as well.

Also, while both are RWD, I can't imagine anything could be worse than a Crown Victoria in snow. I got that damn thing stuck more times than I could count, and could easily spin out on snowy streets just starting from a stop sign and making a nice, easy right turn. I dreaded working snowy nights; thankfully I'm done with that in south Texas. This, incidentally, is why many police agencies have started using some or all 4WD trucks or SUVs instead of or in addition to sedans. For many environments sedans, especially RWD types, simply do not perform as well, most notably rural areas or areas where it snows a lot.

[aerius]

Also, while both are RWD, I can't imagine anything could be worse than a Crown Victoria in snow. I got that damn thing stuck more times than I could count, and could easily spin out on snowy streets just starting from a stop sign and making a nice, easy right turn. I dreaded working snowy nights; thankfully I'm done with that in south Texas. This, incidentally, is why many police agencies have started using some or all 4WD trucks or SUVs instead of or in addition to sedans.

I have a good friend who works for Toronto police, they use Crown Vics as their main cars with some Chargers showing up in recent years. According to him, the Crown Vics are a horror show in the winter, if there's snow on the ground they won't even bother chasing people because it's just too dangerous. The risk of having the car spin out or otherwise go out of control and hit innocent bystanders is just way too high.

He also adds that nothing does donuts in the snow easier than a Crown Vic. Find a large enough parking lot and they could literally do donuts until someone pukes or they run out of gas.

[Raw Shark]

Also, while both are RWD, I can't imagine anything could be worse than a Crown Victoria in snow. I got that damn thing stuck more times than I could count, and could easily spin out on snowy streets just starting from a stop sign and making a nice, easy right turn. I dreaded working snowy nights; thankfully I'm done with that in south Texas. This, incidentally, is why many police agencies have started using some or all 4WD trucks or SUVs instead of or in addition to sedans.

I have a good friend who works for Toronto police, they use Crown Vics as their main cars with some Chargers showing up in recent years. According to him, the Crown Vics are a horror show in the winter, if there's snow on the ground they won't even bother chasing people because it's just too dangerous. The risk of having the car spin out or otherwise go out of control and hit innocent bystanders is just way too high.

He also adds that nothing does donuts in the snow easier than a Crown Vic. Find a large enough parking lot and they could literally do donuts until someone pukes or they run out of gas.

My anecdotal evidence supporting all of this is ample. Crown Vics are the worst thing I've ever driven in snow and on ice, particularly when the two are combined. One of the downsides to the temperate weather here is that everything will often melt on sunny days and then re-freeze into glassy smooth black ice at night, so if it starts snowing on top of that I'm screwed enough to usually just go home for the night if I can afford to.

WRT the Charger: We have one in the rental fleet now (bought for a song by the owner's drunken son after the cops beat the shit out of it, of course), and it is reputedly one sweet ride. Definitely the most badass-looking taxi in the fleet, at least.

[SVPD]

I have a good friend who works for Toronto police, they use Crown Vics as their main cars with some Chargers showing up in recent years. According to him, the Crown Vics are a horror show in the winter, if there's snow on the ground they won't even bother chasing people because it's just too dangerous. The risk of having the car spin out or otherwise go out of control and hit innocent bystanders is just way too high.

He also adds that nothing does donuts in the snow easier than a Crown Vic. Find a large enough parking lot and they could literally do donuts until someone pukes or they run out of gas.

This matches up perfectly with my snow experiences. Chase, nothing. I'd drive 25 mph or less to ANY situation, no matter how severe, until the roads got plowed and salted because otherwise there was too much chance I'd wreck.

[Sephirius]

Conveniently for ignorant old seph Australia have been making arguably better affordable V8 RWD cars for decades now and are unlikely to stop

eg

That's not 'affordable', you fucking imbecile. Unless somehow you can manage to find a brand new one (HSV E Series 2) for ~26K USD, which is more or less the fleet price for a base Crown Vic. Last I checked the HSV cars were closer to 70 grand.

Unless of course you are being a deliberately misleading asshat and posting an HSV car as representative of the whole VE line. wanker.

Even the stripped out Caprice that IS a VE Commodore starts at 30k. And it isn't body on frame, meaning if you bang it up a bit, you have to write the whole car off. And unlike the crown vic, lacks the parts/infrastructure to keep it going (right now. I hope this changes, but until Chev lets civvies buy the caprice, it ain't happening.) One of the best things that the Crown Vic had going for it was it was a parts bin special, if you needed a part you could probably find it on another ford vehicle easily and cheaply.


@SVPD, Aerius

Funny you should mention that, I have a Toronto Police friend as well, and he can't stand the chargers because there's just not as much room in there (especially given vest/etc.) And he doesn't like the Impala because it's FWD. In his words, at least if the Vic went for a slide in the winter, he has some control (steer with the throttle.) the Impala on the other hand, he'd just be a passenger. He also finds most of the Chargers and 'Palas gutless (much like myself) because they have a V6 as a base and don't provide as much low down grunt. Much like myself, if he was to replace the vic with something, it would be the aforementioned VE Caprice.


EDIT: Here's the new Caprice in LAPD Livery.

[Phantasee]

While I appreciate that skilled drivers can handle a RWD in winter conditions, I don't really want to hand 2-ton projectiles to every officer on the force, because while in a perfect world they are all great police officers, they won't all be highly-skilled drivers on top of that. I'd prefer to give them a FWD car if there is no cheap RWD option (and that's all the Crown Vic was, a cheaper option) and spend more money on training them to do their jobs and less on teaching them to be stunt drivers.

[Stark]

Looks like a typical Japanese sports car. This is supposed to impress me?

Who cares what it looks like? Wasn't your point the death of a certain kind of car?

Oh, right, you're butthurt that literally everyone makes better shit than America. Even fucking AUSTRALIA! I guess the real fear is that unlike shitty underindustrialised countries like Australia, China will be able produce enough to impact your domestic markets.

I'm sure the Crown Vic can save you.

Actually, the Panther Platform was deliberately starved. Nobody in Ford liked it -- it's last mild update was in 2003; and only because a senior executive at the time used to run the Panther side of the business.

Turns out if you don't update a brand for almost an entire decade, the only large sales will come from commercial/fleet owners? Speaking of that; I suspect in about five years, we'll see rumors of a modern remake of Panther -- since both the engine and frame are the longest lasting on the market -- you can expect a Panther to do 200-500k miles easily in taxi/fleet service, and in the hands of a Cop, they generally last 50k miles; which is impressive considering how well US Cops treat their transmissions.

This makes it pretty relevant to new products from China, right? Wait a second!
The best part is after your alarmist crybaby shit about the end of a mark, you then realise (as everyone else did in 1972) hey - marks don't mean shit! They'll just use it for a new design later!

So... who cares? Product lineups change, blame China!

Phant, even in AU (with actual cars with actual modern features) cops crash and kill people. Putting them in some bargain-basement spinmachine would only make things more terrible.

Man, is the CV the M16 of cars?

[Phantasee]

The Panther platform did have a lot of advantages, namely body-on-frame construction as has been mentioned, and a very reliable power train (which one would expect after it having been in production for a quarter century). For the job it was doing it was a very good tool. Since it had huge capacity for passenger space and trunk space, it was really ideal for police interceptors.

It's problems weren't really design issues, more that it has been surpassed over the years in several ways. Body-on-frame is great for durability and repairability, but it's terrible for passenger safety. The RWD power train is very reliable, but it's terrible in winter conditions and in the hands of inexperienced drivers. So not really the M16 of cars, but just a product that hasn't kept up with the times.

The pros of the design don't really outweigh the cons anymore. As far as I can tell, anything to the contrary is just nostalgia and rose-tinted glasses.

[JointStrikeFighter]

@Seph

Maybe dude if they had made 8 billion commodores it would cost as much as a crown vic

What's an economy of scale?

[Simon_Jester]

Phantasee, I wonder about whether it's a case of different strokes for different folks.

One thing that concerns me about modern civilization is that we tend to keep self-optimizing ourselves in certain directions without a lot of long-term sense of where we're going. That kind of thing is how American financial sector created the crash- every quarter, the big investment bankers were thinking about ways to generate higher returns and higher profits for themselves. That kind of thinking is why we're looking nervously at the prospects of peak oil and global warming, because we didn't, and structurally couldn't, plan for them in a society that doesn't seriously consider whether optimizing for certain parameters this quarter leads to a desirable endstate in twenty years.

Because of that, I distrust processes by which the technological and economic choices we make gradually 'evolve' towards an end-state in which we find ourselves totally committed to trading off some things at others' expense.

So I do worry, when features like "durable and easy to repair" get abandoned... but it's probably just me being paranoid and silly.

[Stark]

It's only in a sense that's relevant to roles like commercial use where it's cheaper to replace damaged panels. It's amazingly unsafe during a crash, which is probably why nobody whose number one concern isn't lifetime cost under tough conditions uses it. It's not like evil auto makers decided HAHAHA MAKE CARS MORE DISPOSABLE.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Maybe if you built cars for the markets you dismiss your manufacturers wouldn't go out of business?

The end of 'cheap' v8s being a bad thing is pretty funny. Why should anyone care?

Because it's one of the best engines for efficiency, power, compactness, and smoothness.

And it's not a weedwhacker sounding like a four cylinder. And let's face it, what's more American than a V8?

Note: if cars are nothing more than transportation to you, this thread isn't for you.

Uhhh.... yeah....

Let's see. The V-8 is not mechanically perfectly balanced; that would be the I-6, which is presently only offered in the US in a RWD configuration (which is the purist way of going about performance handling and the only option other than AWD) by BMW. The I-6 is also infinitely scaleable and the V-8 was never really necessary in a RWD car. If you care more about handling the "compactness" of the V-8 is irrelevant. The Crown Vic is not and never was a performance vehicle. As for efficiency, again, one can scale an I-6 to needs since you're talking about efficiency relative to horsepower, and that's a bit sly since turbocharging clearly doesn't count for you but definitely yields better efficiency in say an I-4 or I-6 than a naturally aspirated V-8.

Finally the Crown Victoria was IIRC only offered in automatic for most of the last period of its production, and what kind of person who loves performance cars has an automatic transmission on them? Let's be blunt, unless you want to break the law, the only kind of performance that really matters is acceleration--a function of torque--and cornering, which is a combination of the vehicle's suspension and weight balance and the ability to engine brake with a manual transmission and rear wheel drive acceleration lock-in in turns. Of these things the CV only had rear wheel drive and weight distribution. It had the usual floaty American suspension and almost always an automatic. Engine horsepower is a wash if you're never driving faster than 80mph, the current highest speed limit in the country (we'll say 85 even, same difference, national highway standards say cops shouldn't ticket people for less than five over). My Toyota Echo can go 85 on flat and open terrain. While running the AC. Maintaining speed going uphill and accelerating are more functions of torque, and torque heavy engines are by and large diesels.

The ideal performance saloon car for American motoring would have a wide wheelbase and low ground clearance with as much of the car's equipment mounted low as possible to keep the centre of gravity down. It would have the mechanically intrinsically balanced I-6 engine, with rear wheel drive, and it would be a turbodiesel using two small turbochargers to minimize turbolag. The suspension would be on the European style, the car would have a manual transmission, perhaps one of the new clutchless ones, and would be intended to comfortably seat up to four adults and a child or outright five adults with a large and spacious trunk. Handling would be based around maintaining speed in hill climbing and cornering and performance would be optmized for very long range sustained driving at speeds of around 80 - 85 mph with fuel tank placement to minimize changes in handling characteristics as the car went from full to one-fourth tank during typical long American driving periods between refuelings.

Interestingly enough such a car is presently being developed for police use, except for the manual transmission which because US police operate without a squadmate in their car to handle radios/shooting/computer work during pursuits necessitates a six-speed automatic, and is called the Carbon Motors E7. Unfortunately they plan to offer it only to police departments; I really hope they ultimately produce a modified version for civilians to purchase with a manual, because it's more or less the perfect car for the American road.

[Stark]

I've heard there are other specifically police-use cars in various stages of production as well as the E7. It'll be interesting to see if any of them are economical enough to compete with civilian vehicles, and how much all the things people use to defend the CV ('cheaper to fix dings') don't count for shit once you can actually steer.

[tim31]

Uhhh.... yeah....

Let's see. The V-8 is not mechanically perfectly balanced; that would be the I-6, which is presently only offered in the US in a RWD configuration (which is the purist way of going about performance handling and the only option other than AWD) by BMW. The I-6 is also infinitely scaleable and the V-8 was never really necessary in a RWD car. If you care more about handling the "compactness" of the V-8 is irrelevant. The Crown Vic is not and never was a performance vehicle. As for efficiency, again, one can scale an I-6 to needs since you're talking about efficiency relative to horsepower, and that's a bit sly since turbocharging clearly doesn't count for you but definitely yields better efficiency in say an I-4 or I-6 than a naturally aspirated V-8.

As a Skyline owner and enthusiast, you are a woman after my own heart

[MKSheppard]

Who cares what it looks like?

JSF could have at least picked the rebadged Holden Caprice; since that is actually being offered here (I think) under the Chevy Caprice brand as a cop car.

Wasn't your point the death of a certain kind of car?

More sad news. I just noticed that the last Lincoln Town Car rolled off the lines in the same factory on 29 August.

This makes it pretty relevant to new products from China, right? Wait a second!

You continue to miss the point about why the Coda is so important. It shows that Chinese automakers are willing to put in the effort to improve quality and design (safety features, etc) in order to meet US regulatory standards.

There have been some limited test trials of Chinese cars in the US for the last couple of years; like how the Los Angeles Housing Authority began a limited test program of BYD's F3DM sedans back in 2010 -- they plan to begin formal sales in 2012; but the Coda is the first to market here.

The next 15 years in the automotive market in the US should be interesting.

Of course, you probably are all STRAKKED out on this because you've had Great Wall Motors in Aussieland since 2009.

[Simon_Jester]

It's only in a sense that's relevant to roles like commercial use where it's cheaper to replace damaged panels. It's amazingly unsafe during a crash, which is probably why nobody whose number one concern isn't lifetime cost under tough conditions uses it. It's not like evil auto makers decided HAHAHA MAKE CARS MORE DISPOSABLE.

Of course they didn't, that would be silly.

It's not a question of evil, it's a question of over-optimization in one direction creating hidden costs in other directions. And I certainly can't prove that this is going on with modern automobile designs. Frankly, I doubt it is. I was talking about a general problem that you're not obliged to give a shit about.

It's rather off-topic, I know, but then I'm not sure what's left to discuss on the topic.


Market pressures act to create local optimum solutions. So do certain kinds of regulatory pressure. Local optimums aren't necessarily what we're best off with; they're just better than the existing solutions most similar to them, when measured according to the 'right' yardstick... which is how we get things like modern ultra-cheap airfares.

You can fly people across the country cheaply, just barely, if you pack them like sardines and strip out all the in-flight service that used to be part of flying. It's fast, and with online fare searches it's cheap, and in the US at least it's choking out things like attempts to bring back passenger rail, which we're going to need to do anyway when jet fuel gets a little more expensive. Not so good.

Is it more efficient to rely on economy-class passenger aviation? Sure, dollar for dollar it's cheaper than any other way to do it, and it's undeniably faster. But there are hidden costs that get lost in the optimization, so it's not just a case of 'progress' in the simple sense of the term.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

It is not true that you cannot repair a Monocoque construction vehicle. It's just that you often cannot do so in a convenient manner. My roommate certainly did thousands of dollars worth of damage to my Toyota Echo last year but several months later she was back on the road because the retaining bolts coming out of the central support spars for the front bumper were snapped and sheared off.. And had been intentionally mounted from the inside facing out to make it impossible to repair without taking the damaged end caps off. That was a decision by Toyota to force you to go to an auto body place for relatively minor front end damage. I cut the remainder of the bolts off and then we used a simple electric drill with mineral oil to punch through the bent end caps and attached the new bumper brackets with aircraft structural blind rivets and reattached the metal bumper. The headlight assemblies were repaired with copious quantities of JB weld since they're neither structural nor cosmetic and stupidly expensive, and the outer plastic stretched and put back on. She runs fine again, not even serious alignment problems, and it's impossible to tell the vehicle was damaged. This however involved cold hammering metal and hours of careful drilling out of sheared and shattered bolts; not fun, but something you can still unquestionably do. If you really need to repair a car, it's not that hard. The bigger problem frankly is the engine, but with a manual transmission you could in theory eliminate the electric parts from one at least in early 2000s vehicles, which is the main difficulty in DIY repairs.

Also, affordability is sort of specious. A car is an incredibly major investment, why don't you just buy used if you want a RWD vehicle? The price of cars drops substantially after even a couple years of operation and warranties are often offered.