It was labeled “the car you couldn’t kill,” and for nearly 30 years the Ford LTD Crown Victoria roamed the roadways as a cop car, taxicab and enjoyed a long run as a popular civilian sedan.
Ford has a history of some serious bombs in its past, but the Crown Vic is hailed by virtually everyone as the best quality vehicle that Ford ever produced.
The key to the Crown Vic’s success was in its simplicity.
Henry Ford believed in simplicity and when he designed the Model T, he designed it as a car that would run for a human lifespan and beyond. More moving parts mean there were more things that could break, and Ford designed a car that the average Joe could maintain.
Engineers at Ford took that simplicity approach in designing the Crown Vic, and they looked to the past.
Instead of following the trends and creating a front-wheel drive unibody car, the company revived an old design and assembled a rear-wheel drive body-on-frame sedan placed on the old Panther platform, according to Forbes Magazine. Really, what the engineers did was what Henry Ford once did and that was refine an already proven design.
In 1983, Ford released the Crown Victoria and the result was a super affordable, full size car that had all the basics covered, but lacked many of the gizmos common in the 1980s that not only weighed the car down, but tended to malfunction.
The body-on-frame design made the car virtually indestructible; the thing would almost literally bounce off of a brick wall unscathed.
According to Forbes, despite the low fuel economy of around 16 MPG in the city, the car cost 70% less to maintain.
The Crown Vic was designed as a fleet car, therefore, systems such as the alternator were beefed up to allow for almost constant driving and idling.
It did not take long for the Crown Vic to become a favorite in law enforcement circles.
Columbia County Sheriff Clay Whittle has fond memories of driving the “turtlebacks.”
“We called them that because of the way they were shaped, but there is no question that they were the workhorse of the force. They were not just vehicles for us, but our workstation, our office and we loved those cars because you couldn’t break them,” Whittle said.
For a time, the Crown Vic was a success on the civilian market, but the consumer market’s move toward SUVs and more fuel efficient hybrids slowly edged out the traditional sedan. By the last year of its production, in 2011, Ford only sold 46,725 vehicles and that figure was roughly 13,000 more than the previous year because law enforcement agencies were scrambling to buy as many cruisers as possible before the marque went extinct.
“We shed a few tears when Ford announced they were discontinuing the model, but Ford had to make a profit and the cars were just simply not profitable for them,” Whittle said.
You can still see an old auctioned-off black and white Crown Vic with its police decals removed roaming the roads every once and a while, but they are becoming more and more rare.
Hopefully, car enthusiasts will latch on to the vehicle many cops called “old faithful” as they can make for a perfect starter for the novice collector.
See you on the road!
Scott Hudson is the Senior Investigative Reporter and Editorial Page Editor for The Augusta Press. Reach him at scott@theaugustapress.com
