SUNNYVALE, Calif. -

If you have ever taken a ride in the backseat of a taxi cab – or a police car, for that matter – there’s a fairly good chance it was in a Ford Crown Victoria.

But someday that won’t be the case.

Yahoo Autos counts the Crown Vic among the 14 vehicles being retired at the end of the year, a list that includes a few iconic models, as well as some past-their-prime vehicles and others that didn’t seem to generate much traction, according to Yahoo Autos.

“As 2011 runs out, so does the life of these 14 cars and trucks, victims of changing tastes, corporate indifference,” wrote Yahoo Autos’ Justin Hyde, who authored the article. “While a few never had much of a following, several were popular in their peak, and a couple were movie stars and mainstays of American freeways for decades.”

Like the Crown Vic, which has been a staple for law enforcement and taxi cab fleets. Interestingly enough, when Ford puts it on the shelf, it will mark the first time in almost 80 years that Ford will be without a V-8 sedan, Hyde said. Ford finished building its last Crown Vic in August in Canada, and the car was sent to Saudi Arabia.

“The favorite vehicle of police departments and taxi cabs for years, the Crown Vic was still selling well, but Ford would have needed to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to update the decades-old Panther platform,” he shared.

The Hollywood icon on the list is the Mitsubishi Eclipse, which “might deserve a clip in the Oscars’ ‘In Memoriam’ segment,” given its presence in the “Fast in the Furious” franchise, Hyde wrote.

“Almost radical in its day, the Eclipse fell victim to Mitsubishi’s financial woes and shift to more environmentally friendly models. The Illinois plant assembled its last Eclipse in August,” he added.

A pair of Big 3 pickup trucks is hitting the shelves this year, as well. As the price to get into a base-model full-size pickup has decreased, there simply isn’t much of a market for compact pickups and the Dodge Dakota — which Chrysler is retiring — has been hit the hardest, Hyde said.

“Why buy four-fifths of a Ram pickup when the real was the same price, or even cheaper slightly used?” he noted.

The other pickup on the list — the Ford Ranger — is a different story.

In fact, there are likely to be 60,000 Ranger sales for 2011. It even edged out a few well-known Ford models in a recent month.

“Ranger may be the most popular vehicle shutting down this year,” Hyde wrote, noting that its September sales were higher than those of the Taurus, Mustang and Fiesta.

“Ford has a brand-new Ranger it’s launching around the world — except in the United States,” he added. “The ancient U.S. Ranger would need a brace of expensive updates to stay in production, but the hole left by its departure is large enough to convince GM to update its line of compact pickups next year. “

For some models, they have simply passed their primes, Hyde suggested. Like the Cadillac DTS/STS, for example.

“The DTS is long due for a departure. It’s mostly seen as a limo/hearse alternative to the Lincoln Town Car,” he wrote. “Both it and the STS will give way to a new top-of-the-line Cadillac XTS, due early next year, with GM expected to produce an even more expensive uber-Caddy soon after to tackle the Audi A8, BMW 750Li and Lexus LS460L rather than hauling high schoolers to the prom.”

The complete list of retiring models is as follows:

Buick Lucerne
Ford Crown Victoria
Cadillac DTS
Cadillac STS
Chevrolet HHR
Dodge Dakota
Ford Ranger
Honda Element
Lotus Elise
Mazda RX-8
Mitsubishi Eclipse
Mitsubishi Endeavor
Volvo S40
Volvo V50

The full article can be read here: http://autos.yahoo.com/news/r-i-p–to-14-cars-and-trucks-for-2012.html?page=1.