Howdy, I'm replacing my Jeep Wrangler with a more comfortable vehicle for long trips and have a chance at a 2001 Crown Vic with low miles.  I'm curious to ask any Crown Vic owners about their experience with mechanical reliability?  This one has air suspension -- is that likely to cause problems?  Any other notable problem areas?  Thanks,
John

I seriously considered buying one (ended up with an older used LeSabre instead).  Everything I read seemed to indicate they are excellent cars if not abused.  Radio/TV mechanic Pat Goss has a very high opinion of them.

GunLvr

Good car, our local cops use them. It's their Pitt bumpers that take the beating.

post this in brothers of the shield, I am sure there are a lot of Vic drivers there. I myself drive a 2001, and the 2001 severe service trannys are getting a bad rap in my neck of the woods. i work with two who had tranny's go out in under 30000 miles. These were both 2001 models. Regular Vics may be different though.

I'm looking to get a Crown Vic to replace my 88 Caprice. This will be my 2nd car. Because I only drove the caprice for a long time, I am only used to driving a big car. So far, I came across a couple of crown vics w/police packages from Newsday.

My stepmother drives a Grand Marquis, and its a nice car. Strong frame, comfortable, and fast as a mayor out the back door of a whorehouse.

The Fire Dept. I'm with has 2 different crown vics. One is a 1985-87 model ex-police car with almost 300,000 miles and still truckin.  Barely.
And the other is a 1996 model ex-police with 161,000 miles.  Both are excellent cars b/c they've been taken good care of. For the most part. The 96 has trouble with the drivers door inside plastic piece and the front suspension creaks a little but it's a great car. The 85-87 model has nothing wrong with it except the motor's getting tired. GREAT CARS

Bought a used one for my daughter's first car.  About the safest and most indestructable sedan going. (believe me,  the way she drives that was a BIG factor in the purchase) All that power is nice also. It's about the best road trip car out there.

She originally wanted a Honda, but my money, my choice. I don't think you could get it away from her now.  

We've got two 1999's here at work each with over 150,000 miles.  We've never had anything major go wrong with them, but on the other hand, there's always something small (<$200 for parts) wrong with them!  If you do your own work and have a local dealer that will order parts (unlike the crooks at mine, they'd prefer you leave the car for service so they "find" something else wrong, as we learned with several of the Ford vans we had), they're not bad.  If you can't fix little things like (looking over the logs...) wiper motors that quit on one, bad voltage regulator in one, a connector to the solenoid that keeps rusting (more than once in both), burnt-out power window motors (both in one due to water leaks),  cracked intake manifold on one (admittedly, I think there was a recall on it that we didn't know about), u-joint on one,  rear-end seal (once on one and twice on the other), speedometer is broken in both, and more replaced front suspension parts than I can remember to count (admittedly, the cars get driven over a curb several times per day).  I know that sounds like a long list, but none of those were expensive engine or transmission work.  I'm also compressing almost three years worth of problems with two high mileage cars into one sentence.  The Vics have been much more reliable for us than our full-size vans.

As far as cosmetic problems, both cars are driven daily by guys 250+#.  As you would expect, the seat springs are completely shot.  The cloth on the rear seats is completely shreaded from throwing rough canvas bags dozens of times per day on them.  The headliner has dropped in both since both drivers smoke.  Most of the paint has chipped off of both of the front bumpers.  The door panels on the front driver's door don't look like they last much longer.  The dash on both is cracking.  Admittedly, the car is kept in a parking lot with no shade.  I'm sure it would be 100% fine for years if it was kept in a garage.


I just asked our local "shade-tree" mechanic about that.  He said the 1992 through 1996(?) models have problems with the bags rubbing against metal and bursting.  Since it was, according to him, fixed about five years before the one you're looking at, I wouldn't worry.z

I've got a 92 Crown Vic with 230,000 miles on it.  I bought it in 1998 with 80,000 miles on it for $5,000.  Since then I've put $1,200 in for a transmission rebuild, new shocks and springs, spark plug wires, and a fuel pump.  The brakes & tires seem to wear out fast but that is probably due to my driving.  The car is wearing out and uses a lot of oil but it will easily bury the speedometer without effort. Gas mileage is between 17 to 20.  It needs a tune up pretty bad which would probably bring the gas mileage back up to the 20/22 range.

Dont get hit from behind.

They are like Pintos.

They go KABOOM!!!!! (well actually it is more of a WHOOSH!)

Alot, and I mean ALOT of police depts have stopped buying them because of this.

My parents Town Car also has the air suspension and recently the compressor went out.  Very expensive fix, at least $500 if I remember correctly.  What a bummer.

One national police organization found that gas tanks in the Crown Vic's were significantly less likely to fail than the average car.  The large number of miles driven by Crown Vic's, and the large number of that are rear-ended while parked (just consider how the cars end-up parked on the side of the road) led to a few, well-publicized failures.  Sigh, and I guess you also believe what NBC says about GM trucks.  But, we've already been through this here before...z

Crown Vics have a pretty good reputation, I almost bought one but had to  spend less.

What I heard about was a 2-piece drive shaft coming unglued at 120-plus.  But in normal use it should not be a problem.

Also, you should have no trouble selling the Caprice -  there are companies getting big bucks rebuilding PD models, and they are pretty popular with the young guys around here.

I don't own one but I service a fleet of ex-LE Crown Vics and Caprices that are now used as taxi cabs in New Rochelle. These cars are chosen for this job because of thier reliability. The majority of the problems they have are minor and most of them are not essential to the car running. Air suspension on Fords is pretty reliable, I get very few jobs repairing them.  

Had one as a company car

Typical Furd POS (though better than the Taurus)

torque converter replaced at 36,000

weak 4.6l modular motor

transmission crapped out again at 80,000

I own a 2001 CV!  I love it!

there are not too many cars that i find a true pleasure to drive, but the CV is definitely one of them.  I work at a dealership, and i have driven nearly everything commonly available, but the Crownvic is my fav!

[url]www.crownvic.net/[/url]

A friend of mine wants a Mercury Marauder, which is basically the same car, except a bit tweaked.  The only thing stopping him is that it is automatic only.

Here's a simple search on AZCentral for Crown Victoria.

Might want to read thru some of them.....


[url]http://search.azcentral.com/search/?sub=&sp-q=crown+victoria&sp-q-1=&sp-x-1=&sp-date-range=-1&sp-a=sp10021ba9&sp-f=ISO-8859-1&sp-g=&sp-s=1&sp-p=all[/url]

Hang a spot light on the left front pillar and slap on cheap hub caps and you can pass for a LEO.

I read that they have the same running gear and suspension as a town car.  I drove one and it is very comfortable.  The lack of a console really opens up the front seat too.

Hi, Guys,
Thanks much for the good info -- it is very helpful!  Please keep the input coming -- all is appreciated!!
John

crown vics eh. i drive a land rover defender by day. and a crown vic by night. i love the vic equally. and that says a lot, i LOVE my defender!!!

Don't any of us civies ever get tired when people yell out "cop car wannabe!" whenever we drive through? It's pissing me off! My 88 Caprice has been good to me except every 6 months a spark plug goes bad. The back seat is roomy though.

As some may be aware in the ugly mustang post on this site today I own a 99Crown Vic LX with the HPP package. It now has about 81K and has been stone dead reliable. I bought it at 61k, it was pampered unitl I got it. Weak 4.6L?? It is as strong as the 5.0 it replaced and if you look at it as a HP/Liter the 4.6L is better.

My car has 3.27s and 215HP and she is no slow car for being 4200lbs! The new ones with the HPP pack have 235HP.

The fuel tank stuff is such sensationalized bunk. Most cars that get rear-ended do not do so at the collision speed that occurs when the patrol car is hit from the rear. Duh. Let me hit the rear of a typical FWD that is parked with my SUV at 60mph and we'll see what happens.

My car has all the options and is the official "Road trip car" for my buddies, it's what we're taking to KC next month.

My only gripe really is with the headlight lens material, it gets "cloudy" rather quickly. This can be polished out but will re-occur. Seems to happen on cars that get more highway miles due to abrassion of road debree (sp?) as most city PD cars do not have it as bad. I would highly suggest getting a 98+ with the HPP package as it will be the best bang for the buck CV wise, better suspention, better engine tune, and overall more refined.

If you want more info go to [URL]www.crownvic.net[/URL] they are a good bunch of guys. If you want more info i will help all I can.

SorryOciffer

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SorryOciffer