#1999 ford crown victoria lounge lizard driver

You may order presentation ready copies to distribute to your colleagues, customers, or clients, by visiting ġ999 Ford Crown Victoria Used Car Book Values He rose to editor-in-chief in 1993 and left at the end of 2008 to become a freelance journalist and automotive consultant.This page is for personal, non-commercial use. With an engineering degree from MIT and two and a half years at Ford's advanced engine group, Csere joined C/D as technical editor in 1980.

#1999 ford crown victoria lounge lizard driver

As one friend suggested, Car and Driver editors didn't have jobs, they had hobbies with paychecks.

Unlike our other racing activities, that was a poor experience but a great story. On the Bonneville Salt Flats, I put a Pontiac Trans Am on its roof at 200-plus mph. Nevertheless, we raced in the Baja 1000, the IMSA Supercar championship, the Nürburgring 24-Hour, and even at Bonneville. I will admit that some of our racing stories were a bit lame. We figured that if something interested us, it would also interest readers, and it generally did. But we found examples of those cars to test because they were cool and we didn't need any market surveys to tell us so. Supercarssuch as the Bugatti EB110, Jaguar XJ220, and the McLaren F1were deemed too powerful and rapid for America. By 2000, a Vette had 100 more ponies and was 1.1 seconds quicker. For example, a base 1990 Chevy Corvette had 245 horsepower and ran the quarter in 14.4 seconds. In the '90s, power and performance accelerated as quickly as the hottest cars.

Running the magazine turned out to be easier. Extricating Car and Driver's reputation from this arrangement without pissing off the executive suite was the first test of my corporate diplomacy. Early in my tenure, our owners were eager to get Car and Driver on television, which somehow degenerated into a wacky scheme in which I would help sell Pontiacs on the Home Shopping Network. I would get to know all these corporate chieftains after taking the editor-in-chief's office in March 1993. In between, the company spit out the sexiest cars and trucks in the business, including the Shelby Cobrainspired Viper. Shortly afterward, motivated by the fiery John Coletti, Ford introduced the '94 Mustang, which went on to great success.Ĭhrysler, having entered the decade under the aging Lee Iacocca, extruding one K-car clone after another, ended it slumping badly after CEO Bob Eaton sold out to Daimler. The truck division, formerly led by Bob Lutz, conjured up the 1991 Explorer, which infected the American public with an epidemic of family SUVs that remains virulent today. Cadillac and Lincoln continued to sleepwalk.Īt General Motors, market share slid from 46 percent in 1978 to 34 percent in 1992 as GM's sales kept shrinking. The Germans responded by changing their production methods and introducing a slew of models, including SUVs built in America. It was rumored that Lexus required fewer hours to screw together an LS400 than Mercedes needed to repair problems on each S-class after assembly. The Lexus LS400 cost a third less than competing BMWs and Mercedes-Benzes, and it was vastly more sophisticated than domestic barges. Nissan and Toyota went after Cadillac, Lincoln, and the Germans by starting their own luxury divisions. We had the largest circulation of any car magazine profits were lush the internet disruption was still a decade away and, most important, the car world churned out moreand more interestingcars than ever before. Car and Driver rolled into the '90s the way General Norman Schwarzkopf's troops rolled into Kuwait.