1997 Lincoln Town Car Reviews - Page 7 of 7

Plastic intake manifold cracked at a seam, leaving me stranded 1000 miles from home. Ford will not reimburse, even though many intake manifolds have been replaced on recall. I don't like paying for Ford experiments, a costly repair and big inconvenience.

Generally a very nice and comfortable car, although it is not as quiet as I would like due to wind noise.

The front brake rotors became worn and resulted in an objectionable shudder when braking.

The anti-theft system produces false alarms at a very annoying frequency and more or less under the following conditions:

When shutting down the car and I am exiting from the driver's seat. This by far occurs more often than under other conditions. I am unable to identify anything that I am doing to cause the false alarm. It has occurred both before and after locking the doors.

When the car is sitting in the driveway for several hours, the alarm has gone off at least five times in the last year of ownership.

False theft alarms occur approximately twice per month on average, but the frequency is not at all regular.

False theft alarms seem to be more frequent during warm weather.

But more disconcerting is the fact that on one very recent occasion, the headlights totally shut down and the dash lights went up to full brilliance, night blinding me. This condition occurred about three days ago, and only once. After the lights shut down, they returned to normal in about 5 seconds, and then proceeded to cycle between failure and normal about five times. Turning the headlight control to manual did not stop the cyclic failure mode. The Lincoln customer hot line gave me no satisfaction, and the dealer said that there was no way to correct the problem without the failure occurring in his presence. Apparently, headlight failures are not logged in the on-board computer.

Save for the problems already noted, this is an excellent car, and I wish that I had upgraded sooner. The car is comfortable, reliable, and has sufficient power to propel it over any road conditions. Compared to the 1988 Town Car, it has super power and super efficiency.

Fuel economy is stunning. For reasons that I cannot identify, highway mileage has been as high as 27 miles per gallon over a multi-hundred mile course. At other times, it may drop to 25 miles per gallon, and even as low as 23 miles per gallon. I tend to drive with great consistency, but I do purchase gas at the lowest price. These mileages, by the way, are with the lowest octane (87 in Wisconsin).