Crown Victoria/ Police Interceptor

Hey Veeky Forums New here. Wanted some advice. I got into an accident and may need to buy a used car in the future as my truck may or may not be totaled. I'm considering a ford Crown Vic in the late 90's 00's range.
typical price is around 1.5-3.5k, with the occasional interceptor model popping up.
They've got a long service history, easy to repair. got loads of trunk space, and are affordable.
My only concern is winter performance in rural areas.
Thanks Veeky Forums

Other urls found in this thread:

youtube.com/watch?v=TVYJhFuQf4M
detroit.craigslist.org/okl/cto/6109829908.html
annarbor.craigslist.org/cto/6130582343.html
annarbor.craigslist.org/cto/6129089647.html
twitter.com/AnonBabble

Police cruisers are shit. Their automatic transmissions are almost always abused before they finally discard them at auctions. You can do much better on Craigslist.

buy a 03+. but not a shit tier p71.

Panthers are shit, stay away.

How will Veeky Forums recover?

winter tires and learning how to really drive in icy conditions, no problems in snow.

Look for a highway patrol preferably if going for CVPI, better on the engine and tranny.

Dont expect a god machine with the retired police cars. Its a nice v8, but its not super powerful. Gas mileage is decent, and with a hitch it can be a decent work car. its like a small truck in a sedan form.

overall a crown vic is the car-est car you'll ever drive. not much in the way of frills but it will get you where you need to go without much complaint.

I've heard the civilian panthers are super comfy, does that extend to police models?

the seats in mine were buckets and very broken in. If I drove for more than two hours my back would get sore. ended up swapping in nice condition Lincoln towncar seats I pulled from a junkyard. Seats bolt in no problem.

its ultimately up to which car you come across, some cop cars have a fat ass cops flattening the seats, others may have some decent padding. but swapping seats from another panther is a simple job.

OP here
Thanks for the tips, I assume theres a chance of some people buying the badges and selling a plain ass Crown Vic as an interceptor. Although it seems kind of pointless, are there any dead giveaways I should look for? such as wheels, hood/trunk release?
As for the no-frills nature of the car; exactly what I need. Good trunk space, nice passenger space for the cronies, reliability, and hopefully easy to work on.

OP again. I should have mentioned I'm in the outer Detroit metro area so theres loads of cheap ass cruisers. How easy it to remove the barrier between the front and back seat?

Don't let the others in this thread dissuade you.
Crown vics are fun, cheap, and reliable cars. And people drive better around you because they think you're a cop

Careful to have it mechanically inspected before you buy one, some transmissions are in rough shape. Always have it checked out before you purchase.

It's a great daily driver, my mate has one he drives to keep his jeeps km's low

You got a car with the barriers still in them? lucky...

idk, like most things the police do, its just a few bolts you gotta unscrew and lift it out.

if you want to look for unique features for cvpi's. watch this three part series, this guy points out a few unique things about the cop cars to look out for.
youtube.com/watch?v=TVYJhFuQf4M

Look for P71 designation in the VIN. (doesnt apply to 2011s)

Also try to find a car with carpet instead of the plastic lining on the floor. Its rare, but much more likely to be a detective/commander take home car and will be in much better condition than a standard patrol unit.

If you get a 00 to 03 watch out for the timing chain guides. Ford made changes to the tensioners and they you out at about 100k.

Was about $1100 to get fixed. You will know those going if you find aluminum and plastic in the oil and get a clicking sound at startup.

Good way to hang onto your virginity, kiddo. Be sure to vape as you pull up for maximum girl repellant

Panthers are nice. Like said, they're the car-est car to ever exist, the last of the classical American land barge- body on frame, V8 in the front, power in the back, with four doors and a gigantic trunk- and don't try to be something they aren't with "SPORT PACKAGES" (other than the HPP) or angry headlights or Bluetooth dildo-mounts or etc.

>Although it seems kind of pointless, are there any dead giveaways I should look for? such as wheels, hood/trunk release?
Check the VIN to begin with, they'll have either P71 or P7B in the VIN depending on year. If you for some reason can't see that (i.e. not listed in the ad and not looking at the car in person), just look at the interior- Interceptors have a unique interior setup versus civvie cars- individual bucket seats, but with the dashboard of a bench-seat car, so there's no center console between the seats (for police to put their own equipment in). Interceptors also have a trunk release button right in the middle of the dashboard, so both driver and passenger can easily press it to retrieve equipment from the car. Other stuff like stab-proof seats and kevlar lined doors were available, but aren't immediately visible so don't bother looking for that type of thing. PIs also never had the push-button keyless entry pad above the door handles like civvie cars did.

Aside from that, PIs come with dual exhaust as standard, so if it's got single exhaust it isn't an Interceptor. They also have shorter gears in the back (3.27s compared to 2.73s) but the only way to know that is to crawl under and check the tag on the differential, which isn't always still there, or check the axle code on the door, which isn't always accurate anyway because Ford.

...

>IT'S NOT RUST, IT'S PATINA

The Crown Vic is the only 4-door sedan I'd ever consider owning. I love the look of them

a interceptor will literally not be named Crown Victoria but Police Interceptor on the back. Usually they'll have rubber floor lining or something

Honestly unless you can find an unmolested Crown Vic that ISN'T a taxi or cop car, get a Grand Marquis instead. it doesnt have the cop stigma attached, and if you get a higher trim it comes with power everything, and the highest trim comes with a fucking CD changer in the trunk

If you want to go fancy, get the early-mid 90's Town Car. Motherfucker comes with a built in phone

for Crown Vics and Grand Marquis however, unless you really care about the styling, 03+ are the more reliable ones. Pre 03 they had issues with shitty plastic in the engine. I dont remember what it was, I think the intake manifold? which would disintegrate with time.

personally I think the late 90's/pre 03 Grand marquis is the best looking Panther, but that's just me.

The Grand Marquis was my grandfather's last car before he died. A '94, and it still only has 45,000 miles on it.

The V8 is powerful and it needs good tires. My granddad put shit tires on it and it loses traction if you make a turn from a stop on anything but the most perfect roads, even gingerly pressing the gas.

It's a nice car, though. Comfy seats and power everything like you say. Ours has a casette player.

oh, and unlike every other car on the planet, the seatbelts don't lock if you tug on them hard, so good luck if you ever get in an accident.

>Ours has a casette player.
>tfw you have both a tape deck AND a CD player
I can play literally anything

It was the intake manifold, yeah. The alternator bracket attaches right onto the front of it and puts too much stress on the manifold, and eventually it cracks along the front coolant passage, either leaving you stranded or- if you're lucky enough to limp it home- requiring you to replace the manifold, and while you've got everything off the top end of the engine you might as well go and change the coils and plugs and gaskets and then go one step further and take off the valve covers and the front of the engine and replace the guides on the timing chain, too, because that's also a known failure point due to the shitty material used. 03ish onwards fixed the manifold by putting a metal brace across the front of it (which doesn't stop the hose nipples coming out on the other parts, so that's still a known issue) and changed plastic suppliers for the timing chain guides so that stops being an issue as well. There used to be a site at pontiacperformance.net (don't mind the name, it's some guy's personal site) that chronicled year to year changes on the Crown Vics, but apparently the domain expired 'cause it's been giving me errors.

I definitely agree that the pre-2003 Marquis look the best. Ideal would be a 92-97 rear end for those wide, flat taillights with the square-nosed 98-03 front. It's a real shame the Marauder was just a Crown Victoria with tinted lights instead of incorporating some of the older Mercury design elements (other than the wheel center caps). It's just a shame that past 03 is definitely what you want for reliability, but that's also when the Marquis stops looking like its own car and starts looking like a slightly 'off' Crown Vic.

Seat belt pretensioners didn't become standard on Panthers until '01, I think- mine has them and if you so much as sneeze you'll get bound in place tighter than Ford's asshole when looking at a $0.02 manufacturing cost increase, which is annoying to no end.

Seconding the traction loss thing, too- the 4.6 isn't especially powerful or rev-happy, but it's damn torquey, and even though the car weighs in excess of 4,000 lbs there isn't much weight at all over the rear wheels so they love breaking loose on gravel, snow, even mud and dirt. The traction control- if your car has it- isn't bad at keeping it straight, but you'll have to disable it now and then if you drive in the wintertime so you don't get stuck (if it detects the rear wheels spinning faster than the front, it'll cut power and obviously if you're trying to rev it high to rock yourself back and forth out of a snowbank, it'll keep killing the throttle before you make any progress).

Also: between 01 and 03, ABS is not standard equipment. Because Ford.

OP again, Finding out tomorrow if my truck it totaled, then going to see whats happens via insurance.

Theres a 2010 interceptor nearby for 3900$ Aside from having them prove a mechanical inspection, how do I assess the transmission condition?

Would additional weight in the rear solve the issue? say a couple big ass kat litter bags? or would the weight be negligible unless I'm throwing 150 + lbs in the rear?

Throw some weight in the rear and it'll help for sure, even if it's just a jack/some tools and replacing the space-saver spare tire with a full size on a steelie wheel, but for shitty conditions, good tires will help more than any amount of weight in the rear and for standard conditions, just drive smart. People drove far worse land-barges for decades with no issues, the rear trying to jut out on loose road is surprising if you're used to front-drive vehicles or rear drive ones with shorter wheelbases, but it doesn't take long to learn how to ease onto the pedal because you can't rely on the front wheels to pull you out of a hairy situation. Given that you drive a truck, you should already know how to handle a rear drive vehicle without much weight in the back, you should be fine.

Sweet, thanks for the tip guy. 2012 GMC canyon was my last ride. I wont know until tomorrow if I get to keep her. Some of my buddies were sad at the potential loss given the miles we drove in it. Nothings like long road trips on I-75.

If you like long road trips, you'll love doing it in an 18 foot barge with all four windows down and the music blaring.

Best way to tell is test drive it, and see if it shifts nicely. You will be able to tell pretty quick

Still get it inspected regardless

I have a stock 6 disc in dash in my Grand Marquis. It's an 07, so maybe older ones had it in the trunk.

Do you have a tape deck, and is your head unit single or double DIN? My '01 has the 6-disc in the trunk, and if I remember the manual right it's because it has a tape deck player- without the tape, the higher trim has a 6-disc changer in the cabin while the lower trim has a single CD player and a tape.

3900 seems a bit much for a panther, especially a used P71

Look for a gm or town car w/ a tow package. 03' and newer are good but unless you going to be driving crazy then it's not a priority.
p71s only have the benefit of being serviced & repaired properly and having the LSdiff which helps a ton in snow. Don't worry though just grab a whole rear end from a junkyard for 300 dollars and swap it onto a town car or gm.
>Theres a 2010 interceptor nearby for 3900$
DON'T, no p71 should go for over 3k unless it's completely rust free.. Just find some clean towncar or marquis from the early 90s and grab that for a song.
Three bags bags of playsand at homedepot

so since this thread is still here- I got a question

is there anything i can do about that dead spot on the driver side windshield that the wipers dont reach? it's obnoxious because whenever I clean the windshield it leaves a long streak down the side there where all the gunk accumulates

If you can, dont fuck around on craigslist and just buy one direct from a police auction.

If they still are still using them, you might get a newer model for 3k. They go dirt cheap, even the retired v6 chargers go for about 4-5k here.

>and having the LSdiff which helps a ton in snow.
limited slip isn't standard on interceptors, it's still an extra option that most of them don't have

Finding PD's that still have crown's in service, or selling for auction is exceedingly rare nowadays. Chargers have been the standard cruiser around here for at least 10 years now, theres no way any PD still uses Vic's.

OP again, Found an 04 Grand Marquis for 5500. Thinking the price is a bit high, but I'm new to this. What do you think anons? should I look for an older model?

detroit.craigslist.org/okl/cto/6109829908.html

GM's tend to list a bit higher because they don't have the beat-to-hell fleet service stigma that P71's have and lolboomers

Remember user I'm new to Veeky Forums Is a lolboomer an old fuck who thinks their car is hot shit, or a young punk who thinks its worth more because its an older style?

thanks for the help tho. Aside from the semi-retarded looking wheels I like it. Their not the worst looking rims in the world.

>detroit
u gon get raped

Not if I rape them first.

well, 60k miles is incredibly rare, and that + what seems to be almost mint condition is definitely worth a few extra, but I'd say somewhere around the 3k range is the most you should ever pay.

also

>Detroit

I've been in the worst areas in detroit and tend to be careful, but not skittish. People tend to shy away from weird looking white guys anyway. The trick is to walk confidently, but not try to be a big hard badass, otherwise they will start trying to give you the business. It looks like I wont have to go to the D anyhow since I found a few listings much closer, and much lower price.

here are a couple.

annarbor.craigslist.org/cto/6130582343.html

annarbor.craigslist.org/cto/6129089647.html

This 07 seems a but sketchy, Rebuilt title and a pricetag at nearly double the 04.

This is now a Grand Marquis Thread

It is such a mission to find police auctions in miami. I want a car that can be reasonably fixed on my own. I need a car that can go hundreds of miles on the highway when I go to my university in some two years time.

I just want a fucking crown vic. I find one at 2007 for 1500, it's probably in shit condition since it has 110k miles. God damn. I'm so pissed. I want a car.

/endblog

Any websites? Only have craisglist for reference