1996 Lincoln Town Car Cross-country luxury and roominess. By Jim McCraw, New Car Test Drive .com

There are still only two choices in the traditional American luxury car segment of

the market, the Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham and the Lincoln Town Car. No matter what

Chrysler does, or the European or Japanese luxury car manufacturers, they will not

venture into the neighborhood where the Brougham and the Town Car rule.

There are still lots of American buyers who crave automobiles on a

bigger-is-better basis, and it's for these buyers that Cadillac and Lincoln persist

with large, rear-wheel-drive, V8-powered luxury sedans. For these buyers, size,

weight, and interior roominess are the major reasons to buy, along with a desire to

expend as little personal energy as possible in the act of getting from place to

place. They want all the options there are to have, all the luxury touches that come as standard equipment in cars like these.

For the manufacturers of such cars, this means a great deal of engineering time,

continuous application of new luxury technologies, and very high costs, leading to

sticker prices that are well above the $40,000 threshold for cars that many drivers

look down upon as antiquated, plutocratic, and wasteful of energy resources.