Why did the Ford Crown Victoria and Grand marquis get discontinued?

I frigging LOVE this car! But why did they have to discontinue it?! :/

My guess would be MPG.
Many folk are trying to be as thrifty as possible.
And add to that, all auto manufacturers need to meet CAFE standards (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) or be fined by Uncle Sam.
Sounds like a double whammy to me…

If you look at year to year sales, they dropped every year for the last ten years the car was in production except 2003, when a revised suspension came out, and 2002 MY sales were even further below trend than other years. So the 2003 suspension redesign did not bring any new buyers to the platform, it just caused some people who would have bought in 2002 to wait a year.

The SOHC 4.6L engine was smooth, refined, but woefully underpowered and something of a gas hog. The most horsepower it made in a Crown Vic was 250 in Police Interceptor trim, less than a lot of good DOHC V6s on the market that burned a lot less gas. For that matter, the 2004 Grand Marquis I owned until I crashed it last year was slower than my grandma's 2007 Pontiac Grand Prix with a 3.8L pushrod 12V V6!

The cars handled like an inebriated whale, and had a live rear axle designed in the late 1970s long after every other passenger car on the market except the Mustang had gone to independent rear suspensions.

I've owned four Grand Marquis's, including the 1978 model I currently own and have had since high school. They have their good points, and I love them, but for the $30,000 price tag of a brand new Grand Marquis when they went out of production in 2011, one could find a lot of more modern, refined vehicles that were faster, better handling, more fuel efficient, and had more on-board technology. When it went out of production in 2011, the car was essentially an amalgamation of late 1970s and early 1990s technology.

Even then, enough police departments, taxi fleets, and AARP members were buying the car that it probably would have survived 2 or 3 more years had new federal rollover standards not gone into effect in 2012 that the Crown Vic/Grand Marquis would have needed substantial modifications to the bodywork to pass. The ironic thing about those standards is that cops have often flipped their Crown Vics over in high speed chases and walked away either unhurt, or with only minor injuries.

Most of the major tooling was getting old & worn & would have cost millions for replacement. There are a lot of people who complained to Ford about that, to no avail…

To add to mikes answer, the govt bought more of these than anyone, yet…