We don't count ourselves as members of that group, however, especially in the caseof the 1996 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. We have driven Town Cars from Washington to Florida on numerous occasions, and from Detroit to Los Angeles, and we have rented them countless times for week-long stays away from home, and we find them simply wonderful for long-distance runs with our favorite musical software playing. 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.
|