New Ford Police Interceptor Will Be Taurus-Based
When Ford announced that it would be building an “all-new” Police Interceptor model, speculation was rampant. At the time, we noted:
GM went to Australia for their police-duty RWD platform, might Ford do the same with a Falcon-based interceptor? Or is this the prelude to Panther 2.0? Or, as common sense seems to dictate, is the Interceptor “all new” simply because there’s just never been an Interceptor based on this Taurus before? If Ford is really engineering a dedicated fleet vehicle for US production with no civilian counterpart, they’re as crazy as GM is.
Against all odds, common sense won out (damn you Alan Mulally!). The Detroit News reports that the new Interceptor will debut tomorrow, and that it will be based on the Taurus’ D3 platform. Which gives us less than 24 hours to speculate about which engines will be turning which wheels, and whether Ford and Chevy’s FWD-RWD cop car flip-flop will favor one automaker or the other. Oh yes, and mourn the eventual passing of the Panther platform, now that there’s no hope of a police duty-inspired update. Actually, some of us might need to take our time with that last one…
UPDATE: Bonus police-duty Taurus gallery!
More by Edward Niedermeyer
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I was once told by a retired cop....NEVER, EVER buy a used cop car. Period.
A couple of months ago, I had the misfortune to hit a deer in my '95 Mercury Mystique (since replaced with a Saab 9-5). I live off a lonnng driveway, down a fairly steep lane with a curve at the bottom; it's nigh on impossible to plow. Blizzaks keep my cars zinging up and down sans problems even with 7" of snow or wet ice. At any rate, I clobbered this poor deer, called the cops. "Is there $1000 worth of damage?" "I don't think it's possible to damage this car that much." They said to head home and they'd take care of the hapless ruminant. So, off I go - this is about 11pm. 2am I get a call: A cop wants to come ask me some questions. OK, sure. It's a dispatcher lady; I head over to the front door, and I'm saying, "You should tell him not to come down; he'll never get back up the driveway. I'll go up to meet -" and down comes the Crown Vic through 5" of snow. Long story short, 20 minutes later he's got the Vic stuck solid. He was hanging out in my driveway until about 4am, I guess. In the morning there were a lot of really thick tire tracks wiggling around the lane up the hill. Seems like the tow truck had a bit of a job getting out of there too.