End of Era: Last Crown Vic Rolls Off Line

The last Ford Crown Victoria rolled off the assembly line Thursday, Detroit's last full-size, body-on-frame, rear-wheel-drive car for ordinary buyers who like the big, old-fashioned sedans that once were king of the American road.

In its last year, the Crown Vic, as it is known, was bought mainly by police departments and taxi operators, who believe its hefty body-on-frame construction stands up to a daily beating better than the lighter-weight unibody construction favored now for its fuel-economy advantage.

General Motors, exploiting Ford's exit, will import big rear-drive cars from its Australian unit, Holden, call them Chevrolets and sell them only as police cars. GM's Pontiac brand sold a similar model, called G8, before Pontiac was axed in GM's 2009 bankruptcy reorganization.

Along with such predecessors as the Ford LTD and Galaxie, as well as the Chevrolet Caprice and Plymouth Fury, the full-size, heavy-frame sedan with a V-8 engine symbolized American success for middle-class families of the 1960s to the 1990s. The large car was the product of cheap gas and a desire for roomy interiors that eclipsed the popularity of smaller cars driven in much of the rest of the world.

Ford is going to miss the healthy profits from the Crown Vic. The design went through almost no costly changes, and Ford sold 1.8 million of them since the latest version was introduced in 1992.

The last Crown Vic came off the line at the Ford plant in St. Thomas, Ontario.

Ford is trying to direct corporate fleet operators toward various alternative models -- from Transit Connect vans for taxi services to Lincoln MKT crossovers for limousine operators.

UAW agrees to contract extension

The UAW agreed Thursday to a contract extension in negotiations with General Motors and Chrysler to keep talks going. The UAW, which represents 111,000 workers at GM, Chrysler and Ford Motor, and the two automakers failed to agree on a new four-year contract by the deadline Wednesday night, the Associated Press reports.

"While we have made significant progress, we have not been able to secure a new agreement that we would recommend for ratification," UAW leaders said in a statement posted online Thursday for GM workers.

About the only outward signs of contentiousness came when Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne fired off a letter to the UAW to complain that UAW President Bob King did not come in to finalize a deal. "I know we are the smallest of the three automakers here in Detroit, but that does not make us less relevant," Marchionne said in the letter that was obtained by the AP.