Once upon a time, it was the flagship of the Ford lineup, the Crown Victoria. Police departments just plain loved it because it was just plain big. Drop a big engine in it, bolt some lights on top, and that car could haul!
But you won't find one in a Ford dealer's showroom anymore. Well, if you look really hard, and really fast, you might find one of the less-than-80 2007 Crown Vic cars across the country that are still on a dealer's left over lot, but you won't find any 2008 models.
That's because they are all going to fleet customers like business and governments, particularly police departments. Seems the Ford 500 and the Taurus interiors got bigger along the way and that ate into the Vic's marketshare, to say nothing for non-Ford nameplate competition from the Dodge Charger police car version and others.
At the end, fleet deals made up 95% of the Crown Victoria sales, almost entirely to either police departments or taxi cab fleets. But the model line had its share of troubles along the way too.
Fire dangers under the dash in 2003, 2004 and 2005 models hurt the image. Gas tank explosion claims made by police departments created huge ill will problems for Ford, to the point that Ford reportedly warned them that it would just stop selling the police model if they got any more lawsuits.
Still, in its best day the Crown Vic was still something of a lemon and now its day has gone. A lot of former owners are probably just murmering "good riddance."
If you've got a Ford lemon, we can help. Lemon Motor Vehicle Law cases is what we've been doing for 30 years. It's the reason Ford doesn't like us. We're kinda proud of that.