I remember these being ubiquitous especially in movies.
Do we know why Ford stopped making what seemed to be a universally loved vehicle that was in high demand?
Do we know why Ford stopped making what seemed to be a universally loved vehicle that was in high demand?
The Crown Victoria was not in high demand except by state and local law enforcement agencies and taxi companies. That is not a large enough market to support an assembly line.
The Crown Victoria sold less in a year (20,000-30,000) than the Explorer sold in a quarter (50,000-60,000). Most of the Crown Victorias sales were low-margin fleet models.
The Caprice Classic was killed off by GM for the same reason, and the Dodge Charger (~80,000/yr) is not long for this world.
These large body-on-frame sedans simply weren't popular enough for the automakers to keep investing in the platform. The Crown Vic in particular had some engineering safety issues and lawsuits that most likely also encouraged Ford to scrap it.
That being said, it definitely wasn't profitability. Tooling for the platform had been paid off for literally a decade at least (probably more) by the time production stopped.
Basically, The Management Class that runs Ford and GM could not stand being made fun if for making vehicles (that got 24 MPG in the highway) that were appropriate to the task. Therefore The Management Class killed off a profitable national security asset.
The GM B-bodies & Ford Panther cars were probably making $10-15K profit per unit, as someone has said, most of the tooling was paid off. However, in addition to being even more profitable, pickups can also be built on the same assembly lines as a perimeter-frame RWD sedan; so it made sense...if all you care about is maximum profit in the SUV/pickup vertical, and not breadth of market offering for the brand.