A big heavy car can get decent highway mileage on flat ground if it has a reasonable frontal area and good aerodynamic drag coefficient; once the weight is moving it isn't such a big factor and at highway speeds the aero is more important. A bud of mine in west Texas has pulled similar mileage out of his family's Town Cars for years. Around town the weight becomes a big factor and as noted the mileage drops like a stone into the teens, kind of ironic considering the car's name! Lincoln should really have called it the Highway Cruiser. Around here most of the Town Cars I see belong to limo services; they don't seem too popular with private owners. The only limo driver/owner I know prefers Cadillacs however, as he says the rounded cut of the Town Car's upper rear doors makes it easy for a tired and inattentive passenger to hit his head on the roof while getting in and out.
At 32 years old the Panther platform may have been Ford's longest lived chassis, but it's nowhere near the longest produced car platform ever: that title belongs firmly to the original rear engined, air cooled VW Beetle which was in production from 1938 until 2003, 65 years. Even if you discount the pre-1945 production which was for military or promotional use the Beetle sedan was produced from '45-'03. Citroen's 2CV also lasted longer, from '48-'90.
At 32 years old the Panther platform may have been Ford's longest lived chassis, but it's nowhere near the longest produced car platform ever: that title belongs firmly to the original rear engined, air cooled VW Beetle which was in production from 1938 until 2003, 65 years. Even if you discount the pre-1945 production which was for military or promotional use the Beetle sedan was produced from '45-'03. Citroen's 2CV also lasted longer, from '48-'90.
