Junkyard Find: 2004 Ford Crown Victoria Police Interceptor, American Flag Option Package

by Murilee Martin

Published: January 18th, 2016

junkyard find 2004 ford crown victoria police interceptor american flag option

Ford Panthers are easy to find in American self-service wrecking yards, to put it mildly, and the most common Panther of them all is the P71 Police Interceptor version of the Crown Victoria.

I daily-drove an ex-San Joaquin County Sheriff’s ’97 P71 for most of the 2000s and thought it was one of the best car-per-dollar-spent deals I’ve ever had. However, it takes a very special Crown Vic to stand out sufficiently from the junkyard crowd and get into this series.

I shot a professionally-painted stars-and-stripes ’89 Olds last year, but nicely executed American-flag paint jobs are quite rare on junkyard cars (badly executed flag paint jobs, on the other hand, are easy to find). This ’04 Crown Vic, which started life as a police car and ended it as a patriotic-looking San Jose taxicab, has a pretty good Old Glory costume.

You’ll find one in every car, sometimes in a puddle of rainwater.

It appears that this cab was operated by American Cab, which specializes in star-spangled vehicles.

#2000s #2004 #2004FordCrownVictoria #Cab #CrownVicPoliceInterceptor #CrownVictoria #DownOnTheJunkyard #Ford #FordCrownVictoria #FordPanther #Taxi #Junkyard #JunkyardFind #PantherLove #PoliceInterceptor

Murilee Martin

Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.

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5 of 46 comments

Ostrich67 on Jan 20, 2016

Look under the hood, it still has the siren!

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MrMag on Jan 23, 2016

Yes 'Murica! I just found a Phoenix Suns car (click my name). Gotta love the strange paint schemes and wraps. Every once in a while you might even find an art car.

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- See 2 previous
- 28-Cars-Later on Jan 23, 2016
  
  The most humorous yet disturbing aspect is the ape head on the basketball player. Did this car come from the future when they blew it up? If so, damn them, damn them all to hell!
  
  Like
- MrMag on Feb 04, 2016
  
  @28-Cars-Later Yeah, the gorilla is the Phoenix Suns mascot, hah.
  
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- 28-Cars-Later on Feb 04, 2016
  
  @MrMag That's out of left field to me. Thanks for the reply.
  
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