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Ford introduced the Panther platform in 1979 with the LTD, which later became LTD Crown Victoria and later just Crown Victoria. The redesigned Mercury Marquis debuted the same year and Lincoln models followed for 1980. All Panthers had V-8 engines, varying over the years with different displacements and valvetrain layouts, with the last car equipped with a 4.6-liter overhead-camshaft V-8. The Crown Victoria name itself dates back to 1955, when it was first applied to the hardtop version of the Fairlane.

Previously, the last Grand Marquis rolled off the line on January 4 of this year and the last Town Car met a similar fate more recently on August 29. As well as marking the end of the body-on-frame sedan for American manufacturers, the end of the Panther platform also marks the last American rear-wheel-drive sedan with six-passenger bench seating.

The final Crown Victoria was a white model with tan interior and optional rear-seat air conditioning for a customer in Saudi Arabia. With the long-serving Lincoln Town Car ending production, only 250 of the plant's roughly 1,200 workers will be kept through December to help decommission the facility.

On sale for roughly 32 years, the Crown Victoria was a mainstay of the Ford lineup that refused to modernize. Aside from the Lincoln, it was the only rear-wheel-drive, body-on-frame sedan left on sale in America. You could get it with a column-mounted shifter. You could order two bench seats and seat six comfortably (front bench seats in passenger vehicles are now officially dead in America). Lastly, it always offered a V8 no matter what gas was going for at the corner station.