The Death of a Model

No, not that kind of model.  Car models.  An article we saw the other day lists all the major car brands' model lines that are terminating with the 2011 model year.  Probably the most prominent on the list are the Mitsubishi Eclipse, once upon a time among the most popular of cars in the United States, and the police and taxi stalwart, the Ford Crown Victoria.  So, this begs the question, why does this happen?  Why do some lines survive while others die?  Why are we still driving around in Ford Tauruses while the DMC-12 is only driven by "Back to the Future" aficionados?

Well, first of all, clearly, some cars are just a little bit too niche for their own good.  Case in point, the Honda Element, also ending this year, ostensibly designed for surfers.  It looks...  Well...

It would look great in Venice Beach.  Parked in Center City Philadelphia?  Not so much.

Another obvious flaw is when a car is simply poorly designed, whether it's a disastrous engineering flaw like in the old Chevy Corvair (prone to flipping over), a poor choice that affects performance (putting an underpowered engine in the DeLorean DMC-12, which got hobbled even further by the United States' forcing of a catalytic converter into the car), or just making a plain ugly, ugly car...

We're looking at you, Chevrolet SSR, you Toontown refugee.

But maybe the most tragic reason for a car's demise is when it's of no fault of its own.  The end of the Buick Lucerne, for instance, victim of not being the kind of car Buick wants to make anymore.  Or the Dodge Dakota, killed by the lack of interest in small pickups these days.  Or, most depressingly, the grand old lady, the Ford Crown Victoria, felled by the poor economy causing Ford to shutter the plants where the Crown Victoria was built.

Well, no matter what the reason, it's always a sad day to see a car, the product of years of design, engineering, planning and hard work, disappear into history.  Yes, even the Edsel.  After all, even those hideous, deformed monstrosities had a lot of blood, sweat and tears put into them so they could de-beautify driveways all over the country with their presence.  And, call us nostalgic, but we're just going to miss seeing all those suburban driveways with Eclipses parked in them, or the streets of New York clogged with Crown Victoria cabs and NYPD cruisers.  Cars are frequently emblematic of their times, and when the cars pass into history, that usually means the world that created them is gone, too.  We can't help but miss those days gone by, it's human nature.  Cars of ages past, we salute you.  You will all be missed.

...Some more than others.