Hard to Park: The 5 Longest Cars of 1988

Jun

Hard to Park: The 5 Longest Cars of 1988

Written by Tom Appel in Buick, Cadillac, Classic Cars, Lincoln, Mercury, Oldsmobile

1988 Lincoln Town Car Cartier

Life is full of ironies, many of which go sadly overlooked. One ironic condition I tolerate—well, loathe, actually—is the fact that my new big screen TV requires a certain amount of boot-up time before I can watch anything. I find that excruciating, pre-entertainment pause a strange throwback to the era of mom “warming up” the set before the family would settle in to watch Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom.

In a similar vein, it seems ironic that the longest passenger vehicles of the late Eighties were those that were among the first to be downsized a decade or so earlier. In fact, all five vehicles on this list are derived from one of two architectures: Ford’s Panther platform (first seen for 1979 as the Ford LTD and Mercury Marquis), and General Motors’ B/C-Body chassis (first seen for 1977 as the Chevrolet Impala and Caprice, among others).

Is it irony that these once “downsized” vehicles had become, just a decade later, the longest vehicles on the market?

Not only were these vehicles long, they were popular, too. Odds are that if you are over the age of 40, you’ve spent some time in one of these cruisers. If so, tell us about it. And if you’ve driven one of these long rides, let us know if it was really all that difficult to park.

Hard to Park: The 5 Longest Sedans of 1973