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Heavy-duty pickup trucks from brands like Ford, Chevrolet, and Ram aren’t considered passenger vehicles under federal regulations. So while an F-150 or Ram 1500 has to meet fuel-economy and crash-safety standards, a Super Duty or Ram HD doesn’t. But the feds aren’t the only ones conducting crash tests.

Because it’s backed by the insurance industry, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) has an incentive to be tough on automakers when it comes to crash performance. Its safety evaluations for light-duty passenger vehicles—encompassing crash tests and performance evaluations of related features like headlights and crash-avoidance tech—already go above and beyond the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) regimen. Now it’s also casting a wider net by testing heavy-duty pickups and other commercial vehicles.

To get things started, the IIHS evaluated the performance of seatbelt reminders and seatbelt pre-tensioners in three Class 3 pickups (signifying a GVWR between 10,001 and 14,000 pounds) and six cargo vans, as well as confirming that seatbelt force limiters and front and side driver airbags are standard equipment. This may seem basic, but federal regulations don’t require any of these features.

The test group included one HD pickup from each of the Detroit Three: a 2026 Chevy Silverado 3500HD, 2025 Ford F-350 SuperCrew, and 2025 Ram 3500. The vans tested (all 2025 models) covered pretty much everything currently available, including a Chevy Express 2500, Ford Transit T250, Mercedes-Benz Sprinter 2500, and Ram ProMaster 2500, along with an electric Rivian Delivery 500 and Chevy BrightDrop 400, even though the latter has been discontinued.

No crash tests were performed, but test drives were conducted to see if seatbelt reminders actually did their jobs. To pass, vehicles needed to have a visible warning light and an audible tone that could be heard over background noise. The IIHS requires warnings to continue for at least 90 seconds, compared to the federal standard of four to eight seconds. This is especially important in commercial vehicles because drivers are likely unbuckling frequently when making stops, the IIHS notes, adding that one of its studies showed that persistent reminders increased seatbelt use by 30%.

The Ram 3500, Ford Transit, Mercedes Sprinter, Chevy Express, and Rivian all failed the seatbelt reminder test. The ancient Express also lacked effective seatbelt force limiters. Everything else was a pass, though. Not a bad start.

The IIHS plans to expand testing to cover other features such as headlights and automatic emergency braking, as well as larger Class 4-6 trucks, helping to close the safety gap with passenger cars and reduce injuries and fatalities. In 2023, 6,535 people were killed in crashes involving medium- and heavy-duty trucks or light vans, accounting for 16% of U.S. road fatalities that year, according to the IIHS. So the insurance-backed nonprofit’s testing program arrives not a moment too soon.

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Street Trucks Are So Back

It started with the Ford Maverick Lobo, which quietly reopened the door for the street truck segment after years of dormancy. Then Ford doubled down with the F-150 Lobo, giving fans a lowered, sportier full-size pickup powered by a 400-horsepower naturally aspirated V8 mill. Not too shabby. But if there’s one thing guaranteed in the American truck market, it’s that competition never stays quiet for long.

Stellantis is officially entering the conversation with the 2027 Ram 1500 Rumble Bee, a new lineup of V8-powered “muscle trucks” designed to bring back the kind of performance pickups that disappeared after the mid-2000s. And unlike Ford’s more appearance-focused Lobo formula, Ram is determined to go much further.

And yes, it’s a whole lineup of V8-powered Rumble Bee trucks (hence, the name), starting with a 395-horsepower 5.7-liter HEMI V8, moving up to a 470-hp 6.4-liter 392 HEMI, and topping out with a supercharged 6.2-liter Hellcat V8 making 777 hp in the Rumble Bee SRT. Ram says the flagship can hit 60 mph in 3.4 seconds and run an 11.6-second quarter mile, which puts it in serious performance car territory.

More Than Just a Styling Package

Previewed by last year’s visually loud SEMA Concepts, the Rumble Bee feels much more aggressive mechanically compared to the Ford F-150 Lobo. The latter mainly focuses on street-oriented styling and suspension tweaks, while Ram redesigned major chassis components specifically for performance driving.

The truck features a unique Quad Cab short-bed layout with a 13-inch shorter wheelbase. Ram says the reduction improves rigidity and sharpens handling response. Wider tracks, Bilstein Performance Dampers, massive stabilizer bars, and available air suspension also help set it apart from a standard Ram 1500.

The SRT model takes things even further with 325-section rear tires mounted on 22-by-12-inch wheels, Brembo brakes, launch control, adaptive dampers, and a dedicated rear-wheel-drive mode. Ram even engineered aerodynamic aids like a front splitter, rear spoiler, and underbody aero shielding to keep the truck stable at its claimed 170-mph top speed.

Interestingly, Ram still wants the Rumble Bee to function like a truck. Depending on trim, towing capacity reaches 8,890 pounds while payload tops out at 1,160 pounds.

Loud Looks, Driver-Focused Cabin

The Rumble Bee lineup clearly takes inspiration from old-school muscle trucks, especially the original Ram SRT10. Widebody fenders, aggressive fascias, functional hood vents, and oversized wheels give the truck a much meaner stance than a regular Ram 1500.

The hotter 392 Track Pack and SRT variants get even more dramatic with deep front splitters, larger grille openings, unique spoilers, and optional graphics packages. Ram also revived the angry bee logo with different variations depending on trim level. The top-spec SRT gets black-and-orange accents that tie into the orange-painted Hellcat engine block.

Inside, the muscle truck theme continues with flat-bottom steering wheels, paddle shifters, bucket seats, and performance pages built into the Uconnect system. Higher trims add suede, carbon fiber trim, upgraded audio systems, and larger portrait-style touchscreens.

Hotter Models Arriving Next Year

The 2027 Ram 1500 Rumble Bee will be built in Saltillo, Mexico. Production starts with the 5.7-liter HEMI model in late 2026, while the 392 and SRT variants arrive sometime in the first half of 2027. Ram hasn’t announced pricing yet, though the SRT will almost certainly sit deep into premium performance territory like the circa $100,000 Ram TRX SRT.

What’s interesting is how quickly the street truck segment has escalated. Ford reopened the conversation with the Maverick Lobo and F-150 Lobo, but Ram just answered with a 777-hp supercharged pickup that feels closer to a modern-day SRT10 successor than a simple appearance package.

If this is where the new muscle truck era is headed, the horsepower wars are probably just getting started.

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From the March/April 2026 issue of Car and Driver.

Ford Motor Company CEO Jim Farley recently marked his fifth anniversary in the Blue Oval’s top job. Lately, he’s been criticized, as has the leadership at many legacy carmakers, for his company’s money-losing electrification drive, capped recently by the cancellation of the F-150 Lightning, the dissolution of two initiatives with Korean battery makers, and a $19.5 billion write-down related to business-plan changes. A new, more modern EV platform—representing a “Model T moment” for Ford, according to Farley—is set to debut as a mid-size pickup in 2027, built in a retooled Kentucky plant. While it points toward the next steps in Ford’s effort to catch up with the EV industry’s front-runners, which include many Chinese companies, questions remain. How did Ford get to this point? What needs to change? And, in an industry experiencing as much flux as it ever has, can Ford catch up? The 63-year-old executive sat down with Car and Driver contributing editor Jamie Kitman to discuss what’s gone wrong, what’s gone right, the challenges ahead, and cars.

Car and Driver: Let’s start at the beginning. What’s a memory of the automotive world that stands out from your childhood?

Jim Farley: When we moved to Greenwich, Connecticut, the Chinetti building [headquarters of North American Ferrari distributor Luigi Chinetti] was right on the Post Road. After I was done with my paper route, I’d ride over on my Schwinn. On Saturday, I would spend pretty much the whole day with the Italian mechanics in the basement of that building. And [Chinetti] had all his old NART racing cars. We would go through each one, and the mechanics would joke about the customers and talk about racing these cars all around America.

I saw you smoke the field at Laguna Seca in your Cobra last summer. Previously, you told me the thing about racing that you like is that when you’re really challenged and it’s scary, that actually makes you better.

Yes. I love racing. But I love racing because I like competing. I don’t like racing because it makes noise or something. I have a philosophy of putting yourself in as many awkward situations as possible and growing through your overwhelming situation. So, I really believe in survival, developing in a tough situation.

You are more of a car guy than a lot of executives.

I love working on cars, and I love cars, but that’s not my job anymore. People think, “Oh, you’re like Bob Lutz.” I’m actually not like that [head product role]. I’m quite different than that. What I’m passionate about is the sustainability of the company and using this moment of software-defined vehicles and the revolution of lower-CO2 powertrains to make Ford stronger.

And all I really care about is fixing our quality and our safety and our cost, and making it a safe place to work in all definitions of safety, and to have a great future and a great business, so we could do more social good as well, like my grandfather, but also return lots of rewards to our shareholders.

The F-150 Lightning seemed to be selling well at first, but after you’d expanded to meet higher-than-anticipated demand, it didn’t go as planned. Looking back at the Lightning, would you do it differently?

I totally would’ve done it differently. I mean, look, we didn’t know what we didn’t know.

For me, it’s hard to escape the fact that COVID’s effect on car sales was record profitability, as limited numbers of silicon chips were diverted to the most expensive vehicles, which sold remarkably well, perhaps faking out a generation of product planners. Because ultimately, there’s a limit to how much people can afford to pay.

COVID totally was a false signal. Post-COVID, and during the chip crisis that was a result of it, there was such high demand for all vehicles. If you could build a vehicle, you were going to sell it basically at 30 or 40 percent higher prices than before COVID. And I guess it didn’t take us long to learn that our internal-combustion-engine prejudice was so high that we hadn’t designed the [electric] cars right. We had a Mustang [Mach-E], we had an E-Transit, we had a Lightning, and people loved these products. The problem was they were never going to pay the cost we put into the vehicle.

When did you realize you’d done EVs wrong?

When we ripped apart a Tesla with Doug Field [Ford’s chief officer for EVs, digital, and design, formerly of Apple and Tesla]. I was just absolutely flabbergasted. The Mach-E’s wiring harness was 70 pounds heavier and 1.6 kilometers longer. We didn’t know what was going on in [Tesla engineers’ ] minds. But now we understand. They had no prejudice. We had prejudice. We’d gone to our supply-chain person and said, “Buy another wiring harness.” [Tesla] said, “Let’s design the vehicle for the lowest, smallest battery.” Totally different approach.

The Raptor lineup has done pretty well for itself.

I’d say that the biggest surprise of Ford is the off-road stuff.

I just never expected that it would turn into such a profitable, expansive brand image for us. Between the Bronco, the Raptors, and the Tremors, we can’t make enough of the stuff around the world.

But not for Europe.

We haven’t really tried in Europe. Europe for us has always been kind of a wildly independent group at Ford. I ran that business for a while. I think the first year I was there, we lost $1.8 billion. I think we made that much four years later, but we had to restructure, close plants, rationalize. It’s been difficult. And now Europe probably is one of the most difficult markets in the world, because the Chinese have come, and they’ve hidden behind local brands like MG or Polestar and Volvo. And the rules for CO2 are so strict in Europe and the U.K. If you want to drive into the city center and not have to pay 50 bucks every time you go in, you have to get an electric vehicle.

You’ve launched an electric in Europe recently, the Puma Gen-E. How is it doing?

It’s doing well. I think it’s the number one EV in the U.K. now. It qualifies for an incentive, so it’s super affordable. And for the last few years, the Puma [including the gas version] has been the bestselling vehicle in the U.K

If you were to try to sell it in the United States, what do you think would happen?

Too expensive, too small, I think. You and I would love it. The question is, would it be like the Flex, where the people who owned it loved it, but there just weren’t enough of them?

I know a few Flexes. I loved them. And the Fiesta ST.

Probably one of the best cars we’ve ever made. They were amazing.

Despite a Ford lineup that is very truck-forward, you’ve spoken out on the need for Americans to get used to driving smaller, lighter cars.

I feel like we could probably do a better job in America at having more diverse sizes. Americans once appreciated different kinds of cars more than they do today.

I don’t want to just let the Corolla and the Civic and the Hyundai and Kia products dominate the middle of the market. But I believe the best chance for us to do that is to apply our innovation to the future segments like EVs, because I believe that would give us the best chance to improve our fitness to compete, when everyone is going through the same learning curve. We have great hybrid technology. Our domestic competitors don’t. We could come out with a great Civic competitor. But then when I look at that strategically, I’m like, is that going to help me beat the Chinese OEMs or even match them?

If I look around that corner, it’s BYD, Great Wall, Geely. Hyundai, Kia. Where are they going? Well, they’re putting the best people on these partial- or fully electric vehicles that are low cost. That’s where they’re putting the best people. That’s where I’m putting my best people.

Farley won his class in his 1964 Shelby Cobra at last year’s Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion. “I love racing because I like competing,” he says.

The Chinese EV makers seem like the ultimate threat now. How’d the world miss their auto industry’s great leap forward?

Anyone in the auto industry who didn’t feel like something was going to happen in China five years ago was fooling themselves. Certainly, I felt that way. But did we know that the companies and the local brands would get that good that fast? No way.

We couldn’t travel during COVID. We didn’t go to China during COVID. So, it was invisible to us. But I remember going right after with our vice chair, John Lawler. We both looked at each other after about an hour, and we were like, “Holy shit, what the hell happened?” Their cars went from clearly behind us to ahead of us. Designs were beautiful. They were electric cars. Nio had battery swapping. It was just shocking, frankly.

The local OEMs, with massive support from the Chinese government, built themselves into power house brands. A lot of people say now, “Well, BYD is more successful in volume than Tesla,” and they may think that’s, like, a recent phenomenon. But BYD has been making electric vehicles for 20 years.

We’ve talked about the importance of people. The experience of developing the Mustang GTD brought you into contact with a lot of new people. Could you expand on that?

Today, we have this technological revolution of software-defined vehicles and partially and fully electric powertrains. Those two innovations require completely new know-how. And so, at this particular time, the racing and the production worlds collide. The racing world is always dependent not just on good businesspeople like Roger Penske but also on the Larry Holts [a Multimatic executive whose fingerprints are all over the GTD] and innovators who do the technology side of racing. It’s very similar to the Doug Fields and Alan Clarkes [Ford’s executive director of advanced EV development] and people who came from Formula 1 and Tesla who had no formal training in traditional auto engineering, supply chain, or manufacturing.

These types of talented people are also bringing the innovation that is required to compete against China. And there’s no playbook. You can’t go and look up, “Hey, how do I do an EREV [extended-range electric vehicle], which has a 100- to 150-mile battery with a small engine to charge the battery? How do you know how big the engine should be? How do you know how big the battery should be? What chemistry should the battery be? For electric architectures, do you have four-zone electric architectures? Should we develop the AI chip inside the company, or should we delegate to someone else? Use the off-the-shelf Nvidia chip, or do we do something custom?” These are all insane line items. All of these choices have to be informed by people who understand the technology and can visualize whether it’s going to work or not. And so, strangely enough, I find there’s a lot of synergy between development excellence in motor sports and a big company like Ford going through these changes.

Historically, Ford has been known to be a very political company with lots of fiefdoms. And I guess one reason why former Ford CEO Alan Mulally was successful and celebrated was because he somehow was able to tamp that down. I’ve heard anecdotally that a lot of that began returning the minute he left the building, and it soon became time to tamp it down again. How have you addressed that?

I think it was one of the reluctance factors for me to join Ford. But when I met Alan and [executive chair] Bill [Ford Jr.], I was pretty convinced this place had a chance of changing. As an American, I didn’t want to be sitting over there at Toyota after watching my grandfather [one of Henry Ford’s earliest line workers] and all his neighbors, and my mom’s neighbors, growing up, suffer so much because of our success at Toyota [where Farley spent 17 years before coming to Ford]. I was like, “Yeah, I gotta do something.”

I remember coming into the executive garage—now, at Toyota, we had no executive garage—on my first day at Ford [in 2007]. I was surprised there were no Fords; they were all Range Rovers and Volvos. Alan saw the same thing. I was like, “I thought I was going to Ford.” And then, an executive came out of the elevator. I went over and said, “My name is Jim Farley.” And he goes, “I know who you are. We don’t need any help from Toyota.” And I said, “How’s that working for you?”

But as soon as the ’08 [financial] crisis happened, there were no politics at Ford. During COVID, when we were making ventilators, there were no politics at Ford. It seems like that [corrosive internal politics] only happens when we’re kind of in stasis. Not when you’re in complete challenge mode.

Before joining Ford, Farley spent 17 years at Toyota, where he led the launch of the Scion brand.

You’ve spoken about a shortage of trained factory workers. What are some other big challenges today?

I don’t think we can afford as a country to not make manufacturing-grade semiconductors. If we don’t reshore from Taiwan and China, and we have any kind of global problem, as we found out during COVID, we can’t make anything. I think that the Trump administration and government leaders on both sides of the aisle now have had an “aha!” moment. As have companies like ours and leaders like me, who said, “Hey, Wall Street just wants a cheaper car. They want us to make more money.” But at some point, there’s an invisible line, where you outsource so much that you actually don’t have any independence anymore. That’s where we are now.

That raises the matter of government’s role generally. It’s been quite the whipsaw lately.

There have been three mega trends in the government space. I’ll do them in order of significance for Ford.

The first is the massive relaxation of the emissions standards. Huge change. In my 40 years in the industry, I have never been able to sell exactly what customers want. My whole career was marked by CARB and the EPA and the fuel-economy standards. So that’s a huge change, the biggest for Ford. But what it really means is if there are no regulations, then every OEM is going to go back to their cultural norm. At Ford, our cultural norm is to think for ourselves. So, we will offer people pure EVs, even though maybe that’s not the most profitable answer. We will offer EREVs and hybrids when others just say, “We don’t need to spend the money on that stuff.”

The second big policy area is certainly the tariffs. Ford is an unusual situation. Around 80 percent of our vehicles sold here in the U.S. are made here. My competitors—Toyota, GM, others— are like 50 to 60 [percent]. They have big plants in Japan and South Korea; we don’t. But we also imported a lot of parts from overseas to make our U.S.-assembled vehicles affordable. Well, that gave us this huge tariff bill, even though we made most of our vehicles here. Counterintuitively, Ford had one of the biggest tariff bills. So, we worked with the president to try to minimize that, and our tariff bill is about a billion dollars now [for 2025]. It was like three to four [billion, according to earlier projections]. That’s 40 percent of our profit gone. But now it’s about 10 percent.

The third area is definitely going to be: How do we deal with China? China is the most advantaged of all the locations. They have the most subsidies from the government, plus their OEMs are really good.

Once upon a time, Ford built airplanes and television sets, and General Motors built buses and locomotives. In general, car companies seemed to be a lot more ambitious then. All of that’s gone out the window. What are your thoughts on why that is and whether it could change?

I think it’s about to change more than people expect. As you redefine a software-defined product, with different levels of electrification, it turns out the electric architecture we’re building for our vehicles isn’t so different than electric architecture for a drone, isn’t so different than the electric architecture for VTOL [vertical takeoff and landing aircraft]. It also turns out that as we start building batteries and getting closer to tech, we can build batteries, just like we built ventilators in COVID or bombers in World War II. And some of these adjacencies are very attractive businesses, number one.

More recently, Farley has worked to mitigate negative effects of the Trump administration’s policy changes.

Number two, for literally the survival of the company or for our emerging out of this wormhole as a vibrant company, those are capabilities that will be essential for the next inning. And so, for a variety of reasons—both of necessity for capability building and so your business is less cyclical or cyclical in a different way than your traditional vehicle business—I think those adjacencies are getting more attractive by the day for companies like Ford.

Between electrification and autonomous vehicles, the world has certainly changed.

The ride, the drives are changing. When I grew up, my whole experience in the industry was a customer would get in the vehicle and use the vehicle to drive. It’s kind of like a phone— smartphones came along, and now we don’t really use our phone to talk. Most of the time, we’re using it for other things.

Well, the drives are changing now. We have to think more and more about how our vehicle is a third space, an entertainment space. Now that you [can] drive on the highway and have 45 minutes free, what are you going to do in your car? Is it enough to have videoconferencing and consume content you would at home? Or do we need to change the drive to do something more?

Everyone thinks these three things—China, software, and EVs—they’re all the same. No, they’re not the same. The software thing is 10 times bigger to me.

I always say, I think Henry Ford would’ve been insanely bored over the last hundred years at Ford. He would’ve gone in the airplane business or SpaceX or whatever. But if he came back to the company now, he’d be up all night. He’d be writing us notes. He’d be working on the next EREV before our team was. Because I think as a founder, he was a tinkerer. He liked that transformational moment. We’re in that right now.

Jamie Kitman is a lawyer, long-time rock band manager, ret’d (They Might Be Giants, Violent Femmes, Meat Puppets, OK Go, The La’s, Pere Ubu, among his clients), and veteran automotive journalist whose work has appeared in publications including Automobile Magazine, Road & Track, Autoweek, Jalopnik, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Politico, The Nation, Harper’s, and Vanity Fair as well as England’s Car, Top Gear, Guardian, Private Eye, and The Road Rat. Winner of a National Magazine Award for his column in Automobile Magazine and the IRE Medal for Investigative Magazine Journalism for his reporting on the history of leaded gasoline, in his copious spare time he runs a picture-car company, Octane Film Cars, which has supplied cars to TV shows including The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, The Americans, Halston, and The Deuce and movies including Respect, The Post, and The Irishman. A judge on the concours circuit, he has his own collection with a “friend of the friendless” theme that includes less-than-concours examples of the Mk 1 Lotus-Ford Cortina, Hillman Imp, and Lancia Fulvia, as well as more Peugeots than he is willing to publicly disclose.

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As it renovates its world headquarters campus, Ford is removing the name of legendary racer and wheeler-dealer Carroll Shelby from two area streets, replacing the historic name with ones more reflective of the automaker’s current product line.

Carroll Shelby Way West will become Raptor Way, while Carroll Shelby Way East will become Navigator Avenue. The names will switch in May, when Ford plans to start converting its Product Development Center into labs, meeting space, Ford Racing offices, and an employee fitness center. The project, which will also see Village Road become Mustang Alley and South Pond Road renamed Bronco Bend, is scheduled for completion in 2029.

Ford revealed the street-name changes in an April 9 update on the renovation of its 350-acre campus in Dearborn, Michigan, which will also see the automaker replace its iconic Glass House office building with a new structure.

“Ford made the decision to rename several private roads to reflect iconic Ford products, as part of our broad strategy to infuse our employees’ work into our campus design,” A Ford spokesperson said in a statement to Automotive News in response to a question from the industry trade journal about the change. “We are always evaluating additional opportunities to connect to our Ford history.”

Carroll Shelby Way dates back to 2012, when Ford received permission from the City of Dearborn to rename the two road segments following Shelby’s death in May of that year (Ford is once again reportedly working with the city to get the streets renamed). At the time, a Ford statement said the street name would give engineers “a daily reminder of Carroll’s way.”

The new names are a better reflection of Ford’s current priorities. The automaker is still churning out performance cars, but full-size trucks and SUVs are the cornerstone of its business. The F-150 remains the bestselling light-duty vehicle in the United States, and pricier derivatives of its basic platform, like the Raptor and Lincoln Navigator, add higher profit margins on top of that volume.

And while Shelby’s partnership with Ford in the 1960s is legendary, he was always a free agent and kept Ford at arm’s length from the 1970s to the 1990s after a falling out with the Blue Oval. A less memorable partnership with Chrysler followed. Shelby was only welcomed back into the fold in the early 2000s, when his name began appearing on Mustangs again, as well as a couple of concepts.

Ford is no longer using the Shelby name on the Mustang, leaving that to Shelby American. But Ford’s revamped headquarters won’t have a Dark Horse Drive or GTD Road, either, and that admittedly seems appropriate for an automaker that’s far removed from the 1960s days of Total Performance. Ford’s in its Total Truck era now.

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When Ordinary Becomes Iconic

On the surface, the Ford Crown Victoria was as ordinary as it got. Yes, it has a V8 and rear-wheel drive, but it had zero performance intentions whatsoever. Besides, the reason it had those was that it followed the tried-and-tested recipe for traditional, full-size American sedans that rode on a ladder-frame chassis.

It’s a dinosaur, and a relic from days gone by. The fact that its chassis wasn’t changed from the Carter to the Obama Administration tells you just how old it was until it was ultimately retired in 2011. And yet, the ‘Vic is a well-loved car with legions of fans from coast to coast, and even around the world.

Of course, the most well-known version of the Crown Victoria was the one made from 1998 to 2011. That’s no surprise, given that every police and taxi agency had these in their respective fleets back in the day. It was the de facto cop car and taxicab, and its headlight pattern was permanently etched in everyone’s minds. It gets all the attention, yes, but there’s one version of the ‘Vic that we say deserves a little more love and appreciation.

The Aero Vics of the ’90s

The name Crown Victoria was first used in the ’50s as the Fairlane Crown Victoria. It was used for only two model years, from ’55 to ’56, and the name would return in 1980 as the top trim level on the now-downsized Panther-platform Ford LTD. In 1983, all full-size LTDs were renamed LTD Crown Victoria to differentiate them from the smaller midsize versions, a designation that lasted until the model was retired in 1991.

In 1992, the LTD prefix was dropped to usher in a new era of full-sized Ford sedans. Now just called Crown Victoria, it was a radical departure from its boxy predecessor. Carrying the internal code of EN53, its arrival came in at the right time, too, as General Motors overhauled its range of full-sized B-Body models that consisted of the Chevrolet Caprice, Buick Roadmaster, and the often-forgotten Oldsmobile Custom Cruiser.

A Gamble that Paid Off

The early ’90s were an interesting time for traditional large American cars. It was initially thought that both Ford and GM wouldn’t build these body-on-frame sedans past the ’90s, but sales proved strong enough through the ’80s to keep them on the road a little longer. Both companies made big gambles on design, each taking vastly different approaches.

In the case of the Crown Victoria, it picked up where the Taurus left off, with a smooth, aerodynamic design. It’s that very reason why these were called the Aero Vics, and design elements from its smaller sibling were pretty evident. It had a six-window arrangement, slim headlights, and the no-grille look that automakers tried to make a thing in the early-’90s for the sake of aerodynamics.

Despite criticisms of the rather blank-looking nose, the first full year of Aero Vics sold well for its class. If anything, its redesign was better received than the Chevrolet Caprice, although we think both look great now. Maybe it’s the rose-tinted glasses.

The Specs

Although the looks are very ’90s, its chassis dates back to 1979. The Panther platform was a response to GM’s downsized B-Body models from 1977. While the frame was, indeed, the same, Ford did more than enough changes to the chassis to make it drive and ride like a more contemporary vehicle. That same frame would continue to receive updates even after this generation was replaced.

Its new engine was a big deal, too. For the most part, the LTD Crown Victoria came with a 5.0-liter V8 with 150 hp in its final iteration. There was also a 5.8-liter option with, hold on tight, 180 hp, typically reserved for law enforcement applications. The new Crown Vic (as well as the Mercury Grand Marquis) benefitted from the new 4.6-liter Modular V8, and despite the smaller displacement, made more power right out of the box with 190 hp.

Okay, it’s not a lot of power by today’s standards, and it’ll easily be dusted off the line by a modern-day Honda Civic. But one has to remember that power ratings were far more conservative over 30 years ago. Still, if 190 hp wasn’t enough, a dual-exhaust option bumper that up to 210 hp. As for trims, there were base, LX, and, for 1992 only, the Touring Sedan. Of course, there was also the Taxi Package and Police Interceptor.

Constant Updates

Crown Victoria buyers who aren’t cab drivers or police officers are typically more conservative. Hence, in 1993, Ford added a grille to the car to address those who didn’t like the look of the first batch of models. At the rear, it also gained a reflector above the trim piece. Oh, airbags and cupholders were added, too.

However, there were far greater changes made for ’95. Its interior was now aligned with the Grand Marquis, and the dashboard would remain largely unchanged until the end of the Crown Victoria’s production. Towards the end of ’95, it also received a new four-spoke steering wheel that better integrated the airbag. The front grille was revamped, along with a much larger set of tail lights, a repositioned license plate holder, and new wheel designs.

’96 saw a minor bump in torque ratings. Both single- and dual-exhaust models received an additional 5 lb-ft, with ratings of 265 lb-ft and 275 lb-ft, respectively. Horsepower, however, remained the same at 190 hp for single-exhaust and 210 hp for dual-exhaust versions.

Why Was it (Mostly) Overlooked?

It’s not that the Aero Vics sold poorly. For the most part, it consistently sold over 100,000 units throughout its production from 1991 to 1997. Total production was estimated at 630,000 cars over its life. But perhaps the biggest problem of the first standalone Crown Victoria was the lore surrounding the Chevrolet Caprice from the same era.

The last (real) Caprice’s legacy was practically built upon the 5.7-liter LT1 engine. Despite being introduced later in its life, it boosted the car’s image, and the Impala SS further elevated its status. Law enforcement waxed lyrical about it too, relegating the Crown Victoria of the early to mid-90s as ‘the other cop car.’ The Aero Vic briefly had its moment in the sun in 1997, after the Caprice was discontinued a year prior, but by then, the newer, now more familiar version of the Crown Vic was about to arrive for 1998.

Still, if that version of the Crown Victoria flopped, the legacy of that name might be entirely different today. It wouldn’t be held in the same reverence, and there wouldn’t be repeated calls to bring it back. The Aero Vics walked so that the second-gen Vics could run and establish themselves as an icon.

With Ford planning to bring back sedans at some point, perhaps there’s room for a new-age Crown Victoria. For as long as it’s large and rear-wheel drive, we’re good with that – anything but bringing back that nameplate as a crossover.

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Sometimes, I wish I were a truck driver. It isn’t a glamorous life, that much I understand, but still. When I get the chance to haul gravel in my 1966 Ford F600, it’s one of the highlights of my life. That’s why I don’t blame whoever built this tandem-axle Ford “Economac” that’s for sale on Bring a Trailer.

I stumbled across a video of this little big rig on social media last week, and today, I saw it on every time waster’s go-to car auction site. It’s registered as a 1967 Ford, but there’s a lot of custom fab work going on here. For example, the listing says it rides on a bespoke frame, which houses a mid-mounted 351 Windsor V8. Said pushrod engine screams through a pair of stacks mounted behind the cab.

And speaking of the cab, it’s a trucker’s dream. Not only does it tilt forward like you’d expect a COE semi to, but it’s also furnished with tons of switches to control features like the air suspension. It even has a shifter like you’d find in a true tractor-trailer, although this one is mated to a four-speed automatic rather than a 13-speed. Criticize it if you want, but when you’re building a cruiser, comfort is king.

Only one of the rear axles is driven, which isn’t all that surprising, and there’s an 8.8-inch differential with a Trick Flow cover. They’re hung with a triangulated four-link suspension setup, whereas the front utilizes a MacPherson strut. Power steering makes it a dream to putter around in, and on a sunny day, you can bet the chrome 17-inch American Racing wheels catch everybody’s eye.

Additional creature comforts make it a better place to be, including an aftermarket HVAC system. If you have kids (or grandkids), they’re sure to “ooh” and “aah” at the 140-mile-per-hour speedometer. I don’t know about you, but I personally get a kick out of the 8,000-rpm tach. Dream big, I guess.

The Mighty ECONOMAC, 6-Wheeled, V8 Powered Custom Ford Econoline!

If you ask me, this is way cooler than recreating a Peterbilt on a tiny scale. I’ve seen people build their own “semis” that are so small that they have to cram into the driver’s seat. Instead, what we have here is an awesome Sunday driver that’s sure to make everyone smile—including whoever buys it before the auction ends on Tuesday, April 7. The high bid at the time of publication sits at $21,000, but who knows if that exceeds the reserve. I can almost guarantee it cost double that price to build it.

Got a tip or question for the author? Contact them directly: caleb@thedrive.com

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