What is there to say about seeing a pride of Panthers? Well, they are diminishing in numbers. And they tend to congregate; we all know these Crown Vics tended to have a certain herd mentality their last decade or two.
One could think of this as a retirement community for old Ford branded Panther platform cars. Lots of folks have side jobs in their semi-retirement, so why not a Crown Victoria?
If I counted right, there’s eighteen of them here. Being taxi cabs near an army base that is home to nearly 40,000 personnel and is also known for training new recruits, there’s no telling what sorts of stories these Fords are keeping to themselves.
Found July 2020 in St. Robert, Missouri, one-half mile from the front gate of Ft. Leonard Wood.
This is the car that wouldn’t die naturally. After digging the CV’s grave, Ford then had to beat it to death.
There are still more than a few in regular front-line service as marked patrol cars for the Indianapolis Police Department. I am kind of amazed every time I see another one because the newest of them are approaching 10 years old.
Part of me suspected there were still some in active service in major cities. The only ones around here still in service belong to small towns and counties – and those are rapidly dwindling in numbers.
These are the Timex watches of automobiles….they take a beating and keep on ticking. Or whatever their tag line was.
Yes, the Panthers were the Timex watch, but it could be said that the Checker was even more the prototype. The difference is that the Checker was always intended to be a cab, while the Panther was more intended for Police duty and then was absorbed into the taxi service later. Checkers started as cabs and ended as them. The earlier Ford full sized cars for taxi duty were simply six cylinder base models, with perhaps a better heavy duty suspension added. The Police Interceptors that ended up as taxis were V8 powered, with upgrades, and cost more up front from the factory. They just wore well, after being rode hard and put up wet, so to speak, and the cab companies snapped them up at auctions in droves I don’t know that whatever replaces the Panther fleet will last as long. But I have recently noticed the new versions of police vehicles coming available for other use, including several Chargers and a Tahoe police unit in the hands of private parties. I guess those will make a fine cab….
I see the Prius being used everywhere as cabs now. This suggests that they have a lasting economy and durability. Cab fleet owners always know what cars to have in their fleets; their livelihoods depend on making the correct decision.
I’ve seen Priuses used as cabs as well. The Camry (gas and hybrid) has also become quite a common sight as a cab in Toronto, especially used Crown Vics are no longer available.
Properly due to low or no city emissions . Wonder if you will see them in ten years time with 1/2 million miles on them?. That goes for the Camry Hybrid system to.
Prius and other Hybrids have shown that they can last as long as a Panther and have a lower total cost in taxi service.
Almost 2 years ago Ford bought a retired NYC taxi Escape Hybrid and sent it around to some press outlets. It had over 400k on it and was only being retired due to NYC age laws. They stuck it in their press fleet for a while, to promote the reintroduction of the Hybrid version of the Escape.
It even made its way to the pages of TTAC https://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2019/11/2012-ford-escape-hybrid-taxi-review-400000-miles-of-cabbie-farts/
There’s still a good batch of black and whites on duty here in OKC.
We still have a good number of CV police cars here in Chicago. I think they’re mostly used as backups now or for officers assigned to special duties, like standing guard in a fixed position at the lakefront. It blows me away too. 9+ years is a wildly long life for an urban police car!
They’re still pulling front line duty with the Toronto Police Service as well, though they’re gradually being supplanted by Explorers. The TPS bought 300 new Crown Vics back in 2011 and stored them, putting them into service gradually as their older cruisers were retired. I suppose the ones on the road now are some of the last of those 2011 models.
Smart! When you know a product has reached its optimum, you can be certain the manufacturer will stop making it. Time to hoard the optimum.
It was low cost and domestic production that drove Toronto’s purchase decision for those 300 CV’s. At the time, production was scheduled to close down. Ford gave Toronto an astounding deal on the cars to help keep the production line going to the end. It was so cheap, it made sense to stockpile the assets until needed, rather than invest that capital elsewhere. It helped that the cars were domestic production, from the nearby town of St Thomas.
They are still a common site in Toronto. Traditionally the cops here aren’t afraid of some vintage equipment. They used Harley Davidson Servi-Cars with sidevalve engines long after production ceased.
The CVPI was not the low cost option. A friend of mine is responsible for making the decisions for vehicles for a local city. One of the reasons he gave for switching to the Charger was the fact that in Hemi form they cost him about $1k less than the Ford.
Ford wanted the kill the Panther long before it ever did. Every time they closed the order books there were people waving their money asking if they could get just a few more. So they would open orders again and they did that at least 3 times.
Yup lots of depts made a big purchase and put some in storage. They are a fair number still on duty with the local county and state patrol. At auction they are bringing much higher prices than they used to. $1500 used to get you an unmarked one in color, now that gets you a marked unit with the plastic back seat that is in rough condition and the good ones will bring $2500 or more.
I seem to recall NYC (or a taxi company there) bought an entire fleet of brand new Crown Vics for taxi duty. They were all flooded by Hurricane Sandy. All had to be scrapped.
NYC Taxi/Hurricane Sandy story can be found here:
http://crownvicsetc.blogspot.com/2012/10/lot-full-of-new-taxis-flooded-after.html?m=1
My observation is that the two fleet vehicles most used after end-of-life have both been Fords: the Crown Vic, still in daily use by our local PD and county sheriffs, though the Explorer is slowly taking over; and the Ford Ranger, as used by courier services and pest control companies. So far I haven’t seen any fleet takeup of the new Rangers, except for a few government agencies. Oh, the other example of course is the Grumman LLV postal van, though our neighborhood deliveries have been out of a ProMaster for the past few weeks. I miss that unique LLV/Iron Duke exhaust note …
Plenty of Vics still serving front-line duty with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department as well, but every government auction unloads a couple dozen more.
See some everyday in the local police departments around me as well as in line as taxis at the Concord and Pleasant Hill BART stations. Also still see a few (previous Gen) from the early 90s tooling around. Some in poor shape and some in pretty good shape. Took them for granted back then but I now enjoy seeing and never miss one especially the rarer Gran Marquis.
I still see a few CV squads here, especially LA County Sheriff and a few CHP. No Taxi’s, because local regulations require lower emission vehicles. Ford built some CNG CV’s for that reason, but I dont see any survivors.
Yeah the CNGs were short lived, at least in terms of length of production. In service their engines lasted even longer than their gas counterparts. I’ve seen some for sale with 7-800k on the clock with a claimed original engine.
The reason for their low survival rate is that CNG tanks have an expiration date and they are expensive.
https://www.cngunited.com/ford-crown-victoria-cng-tanks/
The city of Long Beach, California has its own municipal gas company. Of course, all police cars were CNG when they could get them. There was a study done to see if it was worth doing a complete life extension of the fleet with new engines and transmissions, suspension parts, etc, in addition to new CNG tanks. At the time, the estimated cost was about $12k per car. As far as I know, this was not done, and normal fleet replacement with new gasoline powered cars was done instead.
My local department still uses Crown Vics, not all having been replaced by Explorer-based police vehicles yet. But they get less use than normal police fleet cars, each one being assigned to a particular officer which means they get only about 25% of the annual mileage and get better care. If you’re going to drive the same car every shift, you take care of it better and see that what goes awry gets fixed.
Back in college in one of the business classes I took the professor had the County Sheriff come in and speak, he noted that they went with the 1-man 1-car method because they found the vehicles were subject to less abuse when the guy knows he is going to get that same car his next shift. That saved them money. Yeah they had more cars overall but they lasted longer overall too meaning once the fleet was fleshed out they didn’t buy quite as many cars per year per officer as a fleet that hot seated a lesser number of vehicles.
On the Panther theme, the local Dallas paper had an article several years ago about the use of the Lincoln version of these in “livery” (chauffeur)
service at the time production was being discontinued. A fleet manager was wondering what was going to replace them in that type of work. He said the magic number at retirement was 340,000 miles.
My city still has several of these in service as Police cars and municipal vehicles. This is always a back to the future moment as these seem to have outlived the Dodge Chargers. We have an odd mix of new Explorers and old panthers. It’s an odd place. Everett Washington. (As a side note the local EPA inspector showed up last fall in a late 90’s Cavalier wagon)
Here is a vintage shot of downtown. I think some of these are still here.
Here you go.