The last American hero

This car is everything a limo should be: spacious and comfortable with soft suspension. Corners are a problem, though.

The last American hero

It’s the little things that set them apart: the wheeled suitcase that fits precisely into the overhead locker, the laptop that never runs out of battery. And the maroon polo shirt that’s tucked into a pair of bad jeans.

When travelling, a businessman deliberately wears jeans that don’t fit because it tells everyone he spends most of his life in meetings or on a golf course where the denim trouser is frowned upon. It is important when wearing jeans to look as uncomfortable and as stupid as possible. Like a fish in a hat.

A businessman never uses business facilities in an airport lounge because using them implies he does not have the right equipment to do it for himself and, worse, his business is so unimportant he doesn’t mind if his conversations are broadcast over an unsecure server.

You see someone in one of those airline lounge booths and you can be assured he is a business foetus. A new boy. You are at liberty to pull his hair.

On the aeroplane, a businessman never has a drink because this suggests to other people he is an alcoholic. No true businessman drinks. Ever. He also does not watch the films because he gets all the stimulation he needs from a spreadsheet. He is in his in-flight pyjamas, horizontal and fast asleep six seconds after the seatbelt light is turned off. Eating? That’s for wimps. Relaxing? That’s what you do when you’re dead — something he hopes to be when he is 57.

When the seatbelt light comes back on, he is immediately bolt upright and dressed in the suit that was somehow concealed in his locker-sized suitcase. He then whips out his laptop that’s been on for six years and still has 42 per cent of its battery life remaining.

Four minutes after the wheels chirp into the runway he’s outside, in the back of the Mercedes S-Class, on his way to grease the wheels of the world.

I have to admit I’m pretty hopeless at all of this. I watch films on planes, my suitcase is too big and I don’t have a suit. But I do have a grasp of the wheels you need at journey’s end. And I know the S-Class is wrong. It would be correct in Europe or Asia, but any businessmen on a trip to one of those places is saying that he’s second tier. The only place to do proper business is America, and if you’re going there you don’t want to be picked up in a Kraut tank. Which is why last weekend, on a quick trip to Seattle, I was picked up in a Lincoln Town Car.

Sadly, this will soon be a problem because Ford stopped making them four years ago, so eventually the current crop being used to transfer businessmen to their hotels will sigh one last time, then die. Then what? Because there is simply no other car quite like it on sale today.

Until 2003 it was the largest car in the western hemisphere. If you could make one float — you can’t because it’s made from the heaviest metals known to man — you could use it as an aircraft carrier.

Happily, this means the interior is slightly larger than most branches of Walmart. Fitted with bench seats, it can handle a driver and five businessmen (or three Americans), and the boot is so vast that not even the Beckhams would fill it.

But the best thing about a Town Car is not the size, it’s the comfort.

European and Japanese cars are always made with one eye on the Nurburgring. We think handling is more important than safety, price, fuel consumption, world peace, the global economy or God himself. The problem is that if you build a car to cling and scrabble on a high Alpine pass, comfort will inevitably play second fiddle.

In America it’s different. Many think the steering wheel is nothing more than a handy place to rest a laptop. Going around a corner at more than 3km/h would cause your bucket of coffee to fall over. So why bother?

Lincoln definitely understood this when it designed the Town Car back in 1876. Of course it’s changed since but the recipe is basically the same: a body bolted on to a chassis, a live rear axle and a V8 that produces seven horsepower but lasts for a thousand million years.

Then there’s the suspension, which can iron out even the most savage New York pothole. You could drive a Town Car through a recently bombed city while doing eye surgery and the patient would be fine. I once parked a 1980s Town Car outside a shop in Detroit and when I returned an hour later it was still rocking. It’s probably still rocking.

Of course this affects how it goes around corners. We know this because the Lincoln’s sister car — the Ford Crown Victoria — is used by many of America’s police forces. And we’ve all seen what happens when they get involved in a chase. Even though they have beefed-up suspension they usually end up in a ditch, with hilarious consequences.

But here’s the thing. When you emerge into the world after nine hours in an air-free, overheated tube, which would you rather have transport you through the jams and into the city? A car that can get around Silverstone in 90 seconds? Or something comfy?

The Town Car was everything a limo should be. Spacious, well equipped, comfortable, and cheap to buy and run.

But now it has been replaced by something called the MKT, which looks like a Citroen. No businessman would be seen dead in it. Which is why I won’t be reviewing it any time soon.