But families towed tent trailers back in the 80s behind their sedans and station wagons, too.
Maybe there's a bit of circular reasoning going on here where people bought giant vehicles because they liked the aesthetics and internal roominess, and then the prevalence of giant vehicles opened up the market for larger and heavier towables— rigid body RVs, seadoos, a trailer full of gas dirt bikes, whatever it is.
I also feel like in past times, it was much more common to see a two car household with two very different cars, with one being a hatchback or sedan for getting the family around down and doing grocery runs, and the other a truck or van for those occasional "hauling" requirements. Nowadays I feel like many times it's two big SUVs, just tuned to his and her brand tastes rather than two shared vehicles for different usages. I'd be interested to know if the stats on multi-car households would bear this out.
I think you're romanticizing that era a bit. The most commonly sold CUV's today are smaller length and width wise then station wagons or sedans way back when. The Crown Victoria was considered a regular sized sedan for it's day and it's as long as a crew cab F150. The land yachts easily match the footprint of the super cab F150 with shorter beds today, they just seem smaller because they're lower.
The article says height of the hood and massive A pillars. People like big and boxy.
Increased hood height kills people and creates an absurdly large blind area. Massive pillars add roll safety but create horrible blind spots in left hand turns.
As elsewhere in the thread, I drive a V60, and r/sportwagons host regular threads bemoaning the lack of good wagon options stateside. With the death of the focus and golf wagons, it's basically just luxury cars left, and not everyone wants to have a Mercedes, BMW, or Audi as their canoe trip vehicle, much less a freaking Porsche Panamera Turismo.
And nevermind that often these cars come with other compromises that signal they aren't really intended for "utility" use, for example the Taycan can't fit a regular tow receiver so forget about using a bike carrier with it other than the overpriced two-bike one that is available from the manufacturer.
> The Crown Victoria was considered a regular sized sedan for it's day [...]
Are you sure about that? In North America, other than the Crown Vic in its heyday, Ford also had the Escort, the Festiva, the Tempo and the Taurus for sedans, all of which were smaller than the Crown Vic, which was the largest car they sold.
As far as I was aware the others didn't sell in any close to the same numbers. The Crown Vic and it's Panther platform siblings were the basis for taxis and police cars across the US and Canada for a long time, and they could be had second hand for for a few months pay cheque back in the day.
> As far as I was aware the others didn't sell in any close to the same numbers.
Per wiki, Crown Vic sales peaked at 114k in 1999. In the same year, the Taurus sold 368k and the Escort sold 260k. (The Tempo was discontinued by then, but was typically moving 200k+ per year.)
Hmm, curious, I remember seeing way more Crown Vics and other Panther platform vehicles from the 90's onward then Tauruses, even into the late 2000's. Wonder if it was just a regional thing where I lived...
Maybe you just knew more cops? At one time that often seemed to be the way to spot an off duty cop was a civilian dressed Crown Vic that probably parked at home next to the work provided Crown Vic. Though I also knew someone that bought used cars solely from cop auctions partly because they weirdly liked the "harshly restored to civilian use after several years of work abuse" aesthetic about a former cop Crown Vic and also supposedly because they were incredibly cheap at auction if you didn't mind being a lifetime mechanic because those cars were in awful shape coming out of the auction.
In terms of platform variants the Taurus outsold the Crown Vic by a fair amount. The latter was certainly hugely popular as fleet vehicles, but the Taurus was Ford's best selling sedan for quite a while. The Taurus was never rated for anything more than fairly light-duty towing (<= 1500lbs).
More to the point - at least for automatic transmission variants in the early 90s - even the base F150 could certainly out-tow Crown Vics of the time, unless the latter had a tow package, which would push the rating up to 5000 lbs (..same as the lower end F150). Later on the delta was a lot greater (in the truck's favor) as the tow packages for the cars were phased out.
Nowadays the minimum ratings of F150s (even with shorter beds) is 5000lbs, or more. The smaller CUV/SUV platforms are usually rated ~1500lbs *max*, with some of the larger truck-based models obviously running in the same range as the trucks.
TL;DR - Even back in the day the "typical" sedan was still only rated for towing small loads, unless specially ordered with towing packages. Now..all that said, the frequency with which typical F150 owners ever actually tow anything is a whole other question.
It always amazes me when I see USians banging on about needing a 7.5 tonne truck to pull a tiny little camping trailer that you'd stick on the back of a Ford Focus anywhere in Europe.
Yes but Americans commonly tow massive fifth wheels at over 120 kph (regardless of tire rating and including up and down steep grades, transmission and brakes be damned) because why wouldn't you, and the sum total of the training they receive for operating such rigs in this manner is a rubber stamp at the DMV.
Some of the "fifth wheel" setups they have in the US are terrifying too.
Over here a "fifth wheel" coupling is a massive horseshoe-shaped plate that sits on the back of an artic tractor and is rated for some unholy loading and drawbar pull.
Over there it looks very much like a standard 50mm towball welded to the end of a metre or so of scaff tube sticking up from the floor of a pickup.
I used to do auto electrics for a guy who imported American cars to the UK and I was always amazed at just how janky the towing setups often were. It's no wonder people think they need a huge heavy truck when the towball is just bolted to thin sheet metal.
See I don't mind "not level" so much, for myself. If I'm towing a trailer and it's not level it's because it's probably for a small car so it's probably in the sub-500kg range and its axles are lower than my towball even with the air suspension down as low as it will go.
The weight balance can be all to hell, it won't matter - it's not going to be long enough or heavy enough to push a two tonne Range Rover around.
Anything that's an appreciable fraction of my wheelbase between the hitch and axle, and over a tonne? Yeah I'll take a little care over getting that set up.
I tow 3500kg on a braked twin-axle trailer fairly often. You'd notice it was there, especially braking for a junction at the bottom of a hill, but with the weight a little forward and maybe 50-70kg on the hitch the major sign that anything is there is the trailer light telltale blinking when you indicate ;-)
LOL. Americans have lost the plot. They've used SpaceX to leave reality.
The typical Dutch trailer is pulled by stuff like Volvo S60 and smaller, and it weighs around 3000lbs in freedumb units. They generally migrate about 1000km - 1500km to the South of France and then back North to the Netherlands.
Maybe there's a bit of circular reasoning going on here where people bought giant vehicles because they liked the aesthetics and internal roominess, and then the prevalence of giant vehicles opened up the market for larger and heavier towables— rigid body RVs, seadoos, a trailer full of gas dirt bikes, whatever it is.
I also feel like in past times, it was much more common to see a two car household with two very different cars, with one being a hatchback or sedan for getting the family around down and doing grocery runs, and the other a truck or van for those occasional "hauling" requirements. Nowadays I feel like many times it's two big SUVs, just tuned to his and her brand tastes rather than two shared vehicles for different usages. I'd be interested to know if the stats on multi-car households would bear this out.