- sedan 138,812
- 3,252 below average
- 600 great
- Plainfield, NJ
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- autoshopper.com
- 3,252 below average sedan 138,812 gasoline automatic
1996 lincoln town car review this car review is specific to this model, not the actual vehicle for sale. Cross-country luxury and roominess. introductionthere are still only two choices in the traditional american luxury car segment of the market, the cadillac fleetwood brougham and the lincoln town car. Rather, we see the town car as a vehicle equipped for a specialized mission, and one that does its job very well indeed. Music performance in this case is through a ford jbl premium sound system with digital signal processing (dsp). We found the sound reproduction excellent up to about eight tenths of full volume. the current generation of town car has been with us since 1990, built on the same panther platform as the ford crown victoria and mercury grand marquis. It got a completely new instrument panel, new headlamps, and an adjustable steering effort system for its fifth birthday last year. It also lost the vertical glass supports in its rear windows, allowing for the use of a much larger single pane in the rear doors and cleaning up the appearance a bit. So, while it hasn't lost any of its original bulk, its appearance is cleaner and crisper than a 1990 version. Not surprisingly, after a year of heavy investment, the 1996 town car is virtually identical to last year's car. interioraccommodation is this car's long suit. It has huge doors, tall windows, deep leather-clad seats for five real people, plenty of storage space, and generous interior illumination for night maneuvers. The curved, hooded instrument panel houses a combination of analog and digital instrumentation that's a long way from the old square-face instruments with beveled glass covers. It gets about triple the mileage of the old 460 on the highway and produces 210 horsepower, adequate for most of us, but without the accelerative snap provided by the cadillac's 350 cubic-inch, high-torque v8. The induction system has been changed for 1996 to a center-entry system that is quite a bit quieter at wide-open throttle. The town car's transmission is an equally good ford 4r70w 4-speed automatic overdrive that gives away some shift smoothness to the japanese luxury cars, but not much. the town car in its most opulent rendition, the cartier, is the one we tested for this report, a model that adds twin bucket-bench power 6-way heated memory seats, electrochromic mirrors, traction assist, and 16-inch spoked aluminum wheels and tires to the already huge list of town car standard equipment. But it drives and rides like all the others, which is to say very quietly and very smoothly, unless and until it falls into a 5-star pothole, in which case the suspension fails to protect the occupants from considerable noise and harshness. This is a luxury car, and its coil spring suspension is designed to soak up intrusions and isolate the spacious cabin from the outside world to the maximum extent possible. We think the car functions pretty well for what it is. But we really didn't care for the red plastic material used on the dashtop, door panels and kick panels. No one in the industry has found a way to make red plastic interiors appealing to these old and seasoned eyes, and we wish someone in ford's design activity would permanently ban red and blue plastic materials in favor of real luxury colors like grey and black and tan. Red plastic, no matter the grain or the maker, looks cheap, and it shouldn't be in a $43,000 car. Leather Seats✔ Aluminum Wheels✔ Alloy Wheels
600 Plainfield, NJPlainfield, NJ at autoshopper.com