Executive Cars - History

History

The term was coined in the 1960s to describe cars targeted at successful professionals and middle to senior managers, often as a company car but retaining enough performance and comfort to be desirable in their own right. Ford identified some of the higher-spec Cortina models as Executives, the 1600E Mk2 becoming something of a cult car in later years for its blend of performance and comparative luxury. The definitive Ford executive car of the 1970s and 1980s was the Granada. Larger Triumphs such as the 2000 and 2500 firmly fitted into this category, as did some of the larger Vauxhall models from the VX4/90 and Ventora through to the Carlton. The definitive British executive cars of the 1960s and 1970s though remain the Rover P6 range, superseded by the modern SD1, and the Jaguar XJ6. At the bottom end of the market, executive cars could be luxury versions of family saloons; at the higher end they were often larger models by mainstream manufacturers or the entry-level models by companies specialising in larger luxury vehicles. The executive car was seen as aspirational, hence the emphasis on standing out from the crowd—but also a business tool enabling its users to exploit Britain's evolving motorway network. Early executive cars typically offered engines of between 2.0 and 3.5 litres in size, compared with 1.6 to 2.4 litres of a large family car; these days the average family saloon is more likely to be a two-litre car with executive cars generally starting at around 2.5 litres, although in some markets such as Italy and France where tax structures make large engines prohibitively expensive to own and run there are many 2.0-litre executive vehicles.