As 2011 fades into history, so do some once-popular car and truck nameplates, all victims of "progress."
At the top of the list of not-gonna-be-here-anymores are two Ford Motor Co. stalwarts, the Ranger compact pickup and the Crown Victoria large sedan -- whose last few years have seen it relegated mostly to police and taxi fleets.
Others going away include one of my favorites, the Chevrolet HHR small crossover, as well as the Dodge Dakota midsize pickup; Mitsubishi Eclipse compact coupe/convertible; Mitsubishi Endeavor midsize SUV; Honda Element compact crossover; Mazda RX8 rotary-engine sports car; Mazda Tribute compact SUV; and three big sedans from General Motors, the Buick Lucerne and the Cadillac DTS and STS.
The demise of the Crown Vic, as it's known in shorthand, is a no-brainer.
This car is almost a dinosaur, and was one of the last cars on the market with roots in the big sedan cruisers that Americans enjoyed before the first gasoline crisis, in 1974, began changing the automotive landscape forever.
Those three big GM sedans are facing the same fate at the Crown Vic for much the same reason: Their aging consumer bases have shrunk to nearly nothing. GM has newer, more-exciting Buick and Cadillac models that appeal to younger buyers.
Cops, taxi drivers, and people over 65 loved the Crown Vic, and there is still a lot to be said for its sturdy construction, roomy interior, and rear-wheel-drive performance.
Ford now offers special "interceptor" versions of the front-wheel-drive Taurus sedan and the redesigned Explorer SUV to replace the Crown Vic in public-safety fleets, but the front-drive Chevrolet Impala has been steadily taking its place for several years. And Chevrolet this year rolled out a new rear-drive Caprice police sedan, made in Australia, which looks to be an even better alternative to the Crown Vic.
Another worthy competitor is the rear-drive Dodge Charger police model, which is making some progress getting law-enforcement agencies to embrace it as a replacement for the Crown Vic.
Not quite as logical as Ford's decision to drop the Crown Vic was the automaker's move to discontinue the Ranger, arguably the last true compact pickup on the market.
What's puzzling about this is that the Ranger comes with a fuel-efficient four-cylinder engine and offers people who want a pickup of some sort an alternative to the larger, more-thirsty full-size models such as the Ford F-150.
Chrysler's decision to kill the Dakota makes sense for one main reason: This formerly compact, then midsize, then even bigger pickup has grown until it's as large as some models of the full-size Ram truck. The Dakota doesn't seem to fit with the company's new strategy for the Ram, which now is a separate brand.
Still, a case could be made for redesigning the Dakota and taking it back down in size so it could compete effectively against two compact/midsize pickups that are still doing quite well in the marketplace: the Toyota Tacoma and the Nissan Frontier.
From my own perspective, I hate to see the Chevy HHR bite the dust. This is one of my favorite recent GM models, a retro-styled small wagon that took the Chrysler PT Cruiser idea and made it even better. I had an HHR for a while, and I enjoyed its roomy and versatile interior, the cool exterior that looked like a panel truck from the late 1940s, and its great fuel economy -- I averaged about 30 mpg whenever I took it on road trips.
GM is ending production because the vehicle on which it was based, the Chevy Cobalt compact car, went away last year when its successor, the Cruze, was introduced.
Chevy has other small crossovers to take its place, such as the 2012 Sonic hatchback, but nothing compares to the HHR's unique styling. (HHR stands for "heritage high roof," a reference to the high-roof Chevrolet panel vans and early Suburban models whose styling it resembled.)
The demise of the Honda Element is also puzzling, but perhaps explainable because the CR-V, upon which it is based, has been redesigned for 2012. Maybe Honda didn't want to spend the money to develop a new version of the Element, as well.
But the Element was to many people a better rendition of the CR-V concept, a small crossover utility vehicle that could handle all kinds of situations, including daily commuting and backwoods camping.
Mazda's discontinuation of the RX8 also is explainable. The rotary engine, for all of its promise of big performance in a small package, never overcame the problems of fuel inefficiency and some inherent design flaws that made it less than reliable.
Fun to drive? Sure. But in the end, that just wasn't enough.
First Published December 30, 2011, 5:00 a.m.
