A town car is a historical automobile body style characterized by four doors, an open front compartment and an enclosed rear compartment. The front compartment may include a removable cover. Customers intending to be driven by a chauffeur often chose this body style.
In Europe the style is known as Sedanca de Ville, often shortened to Sedanca or de Ville. The name Sedanca was introduced by the Spanish Count Salamanca in the 1920s.
The contemporary Lincoln Town Car derives its name from this historical body style despite the fact that it does not carry a town car body by the historical definition. The only Lincoln vehicle known to carry a town car body was a vehicle custom built in 1922 for Henry Ford's personal use.
Ford introduced a town car body to its Model A line in December 1928. Ford eventually manufactured 1,065 Model A town cars.
In 1940 and 1941, a limited edition model of the Cadillac Sixty Special carried the Town Car name. It was reintroduced as a coupe hardtop in 1949 using the French name for the body style Coupe DeVille and in 1956 as a four-door hardtop called the Sedan DeVille.
Famous quotes containing the words town and/or car:
“This was the most completely maritime town that we were ever in. It was merely a good harbor, surrounded by land, dry if not firm,—an inhabited beach, whereon fishermen cured and stored their fish, without any back country.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The car as we know it is on the way out. To a large extent, I deplore its passing, for as a basically old- fashioned machine, it enshrines a basically old-fashioned idea: freedom. In terms of pollution, noise and human life, the price of that freedom may be high, but perhaps the car, by the very muddle and confusion it causes, may be holding back the remorseless spread of the regimented, electronic society.”
—J.G. (James Graham)