Title: Fascinating 1936 Footage Of Car Assembly Line Source:
tube URL Source:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40yDbeukR10 Published:Sep 15, 2011 Author:White American Workers Post Date:2011-09-15 21:40:20 by Flintlock Keywords:None Views:319 Comments:16
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- The last Ford Crown Victoria rolled off a Canadian assembly line Thursday, marking the end of the big, heavy Ford cars that have been popular with taxi fleets and police departments for decades.
Since 1979, almost 10 million Crown Victoria, Mercury Grand Marquis and Lincoln Town Cars -- so-called Panther Platform vehicles -- have been sold.
The Crown Victoria and its cousins have been popular with fleet users because of their roominess, legendary ruggedness and relative simplicity.
Most cars today are built with so-called unibody engineering in which the body sides and roof play a role in keeping the body rigid. The Panther Platform vehicles were engineered with an old-fashioned body-on-frame design that's mostly used by pickup trucks today because, while heavier, it's better able to bounce back from heavy, punishing use.
"You couldn't kill it no matter what you did to it," Ford spokesman Octavio Navarro said of the Crown Victoria.
The automaker has started producing the specially designed Taurus Police Interceptor to replace the Crown Victoria that had been America's most popular police car.