I looked over the inventory of that auction... lots of good low mileage, not-shot-out vehicles there to be had. If it were in my area, it would get good activity on the Vics, the ambulances, the Tahoes and much more.

I'll be interested to hear what kind of prices they fetch.

Looks like it's still SAP time in Sacramento County.

They just posted 3 more gorgeous metallic SAP's, under 100k miles, under 200 idle hours, no dings. That's in addition to the two they have closing tomorrow that are already bid over $3K. I'd expect those two to close at $4-6K each.

I made it over there Saturday, there were only the two Vics, I'll break them down as follows:

2010 CVPI 100k miles:
https://bid.onlinepros.com/ui/auctions/65996/6482893

^^This one sold for $4200, never started because battery crew left to go jump off equipment while auctioneer kept selling cars. This was a grimy, dirty patrol shop with the back seat missing. Carpet & cloth. Paint was decent, lightbar removed. Glob of silicone on roof.

2007 CVPI 72k miles:
https://bid.onlinepros.com/ui/auctions/65996/6482896
^^THis one sold for $3700, never started due to lack of jumper crew as mentioned, this one had a bad spot on the roof (thanks Peelformance White) & a ding in the driver's door. Interior much nicer, & cleaner in this one than the aforementioned 2010, less dirty & had a regular backseat in it. Also carpet, cloth, & cruise. BUT, the guys that bought this one, I saw them later trying & failing miserably to get it started, they still did not have it going by the time I left.

Side notes:
The Tahoes were all 2012-2017 or so, they all sold between $9k & $14k.

The Fusion were all 2006-2017. They sold between about $6k on up to $14k.


Special mention:
This 2002 Silverado with 42k miles well optioned with bad roof paint sold for $6900. Jumped it off to start it & ran well for the sale. Then I saw the guy trying to leave in it & it was dying, backfiring, & he had to 2-foot it getting it out of the lot. Made me feel better about what I bought...

I bought this:
2004 Silverado 125k for $4600:
https://bid.onlinepros.com/ui/auctions/65996/6482837
They had to jump it off, started right up no smoking, rattles, or knocking. Cold A/C, tilt, cruise, carpet, cloth, manual windows, manual locks. Nice inside other than Needs headliner, standard-issue GM cracked dash pad, & clear coat is peeling. New tires on rear, old dryrotted tires on front. Made the drive over a hour to get home under it's own power. Not sure if I am going to keep it & replace my ancient 1989 C1500 with or yet or not. I watched essentially this same truck but a 2005 sell at another online auction locally about a month back for $7400, so I feel like I did okay on this one even with today's inflated prices.

Well, that tells me that live auction prices in Texas are still going high.

Meanwhile, I have a solid-running, no-flaws, good tires, newish battery, no peeling paint 2005 P71 with 116K miles for sale locally at $4100, not a single call at $4100.

Normally I get scammer calls coming out of the woodwork in the first few days. Perhaps I'm overmarket, but a look at the competition says no.

For contrast this truck that's very similiar to the one I just bought Saturday for $4600 sold a couple months back for over $7k:

https://www.govdeals.com/index.cfm?fa=Main.Item&itemid=1186&acctid=1731

Good point. Maybe were sitting on the flex point in the market as it starts to go back down towards normalcy because I still haven’t had a single call on my crown vic for sale and i’m about to drop it in price.

Also we're rolling into the end of the year, last couple months are hard to sell anything (holidays, trips, etc), but usually the best time of year to buy something, especially from auctions.

Yeah but in TEXAS the truck "is King" as the saying goes. The fella from whom we purchased The 5-O does the auction-fix-resell thing for a living and is a dealer. He has always told me that trucks are his staple because he can't buy enough of them and because they never sit long on his lot. Heck one of the last times I was out his way he had a couple of basket cases that were 70s vintage trucks. Both were purchased by folk who purportedly were planning on restoring them. 'Point being that even those critters sold within a week. So I'm not surprised that you were able to flip that GovDeals truck like you were. Congratulations on a good result! Do you flip too, as in being a dealer?

That's not my Govdeals truck, that was just a similiar one to what I purchased from Lemons Auctioneers/Fort Bend County a couple weeks ago. I try & flip a few a year as an individual, but with limited access to only public auctions which have gone mostly online, I only wind up getting to do a couple a year these days at best.

Well, perhaps I spoke too early. I see that the City of Sumner Washington, outside Seattle Tacoma, just auctioned a silver patrol P71, that they describe as "2011 crown victoria, 71000 miles, 2835 hrs, ex-patrol car, average condition" for $5100.

If it has low miles and is a later year, looks like they still command premium prices.

Still Crown vics showing up in the auctions around Tennessee. Mostly well-used patrol units, commonly mechanical problems included. Still look like mostly solid cars however.
Prices holding steady for the most part.
I see THIS LISTING for one of KPD snow weather units. Note the studded rear snow tires. "Rusty bad". Yikes.

Tenevic- That unit, if it had working power steering, would go for over 4k in my area. You guys are very blessed to have an abundance of Vics still at your disposal, and often times without rust. Here, they go for 2-3k at auction with visible rust on the exterior of the body, usually completely rotted out underneath. Being rust free here, regardless of miles, would get you to 4-5k resale alone. I am so jealous of all the rust free 1-2k vics I keep seeing here at other state's auctions, even if they have 120-140k miles or are dirty or have minor cosmetic or interior flaws. I am REALLY getting tempted to just go south or out west and get some of these 3k dollar cars and bring them here, clean them up, and flip for 5-6k. I need to look into auctions that are happening in nearby rust free states such as OK, TN, AR, etc. It is hard though to bid without seeing them in person and to rely on the description in the listing and a few pictures.

Dmblanch- In my area crown Vics are still available at auction, albeit far more uncommon than they used to be. The units being sold now tend to be government owned fleet vehicles used for services outside of police duty, such as county cars, assessor vehicles, etc. With that said, the only ones nearby right now are chargers. There are two 2015's available that claim to have no issues at all, no dash lights on, no problems. They each have about 130k miles and look to be in decent shape. They both have 5.7s and were used as state patrol vehicles. Neither has any bidding action and they close soon. Both are listed at 5k. Overpriced? I would have thought these are easy flips prior to reading your assessment of charger reliability compared to a crown vic. Now I am hesitant as I do not want any engine issues. I do recall seeing in the past these chargers getting flipped by dealers for like 8-10k though, and this was even before the COVID bubble.

Well, as you may have read on here in other threads, I've expressed my distaste for chargers numerous times. They sell for higher prices than our beloved reliable vics, no matter what age, but they come with many more costly repair issues, most notably the dreaded cam and lifter tick endemic to the post 2009 VVT Chargers going all the way up to present. It's a $4000 repair caused by the top end of the engine being starved of oil with excessive idling, wearing grooves in the cam and eventually causing misfires and lifter failure after the notorious tick sets in. This is the worst of their problems, they're also known for front end suspension issues and power steering pump failures. Often REPEATED failures of these same components multiple times with the first 100k miles.

By 100k miles a police charger is generally shot out. The State of Utah Highway Patrol has just decided to purge its fleet of ALL chargers in favor of Tahoes and Explorers and you can now see many AWD 2017 and 2018 UHP Chargers with around 100-110k miles up for sale on Govdeals. The State doesn't know how to sell them, they posted them with buy-it-nows equal to their reserve prices, which were about $14k dollars.

Unsurprisingly, none sold. So they relisted them, this time they foolishly also put of videos of the engine bay upon start up and every single video reveals a badly ticking engine. They might as well put up a sign that says WARNING: CAM AND LIFTER PROBLEMS, ENGINE SHOT OUT.

And now they don't get any bids over $6,000, so nothing sells and they relist the same cars over and over again fruitlessly.

At the same time the city of South Jordan Utah decided to purge it's fleet of all its Chargers, INCLUDING current late model 2018 units with as few as 20-50K miles. These were running, in service cars that any other agency could put straight on the streets, but South Jordan said "BASTA! We've had it."

Smart decision, because these AWD Chargers are selling like hotcakes on Public Surplus for 18 to 20k each.

And then there's Cedar City Utah, a smallish city down south where I just picked up a Charger today and had a loooooong talk with the fleet manager about this very issue.

Cedar City has also decided it has had it with Chargers and is purging its fleet. They are moving to all F150 trucks with the 5.0 V8, no Ecoboost for them. Their reasoning is if they change their livery colors to white or silver, those trucks can see a second life with Parks or Public Works after they've been rode hard by PD. And the 5.0 is pretty reliable. Smart thinking.

I asked this fleet manager about his historical experience with the cam/lifter failure in the 5.7. He said that while 2009 was the first year that had it, they didn't start to notice the issue at all until 3 or four years down the road (2013 or so), and then they didn't know what caused it and Dodge was telling them there wasn't a problem and they thought Dodge would fix it with newer generations. Plus Ford dropped the Vic and the Taurusceptor didn't really fill its void so Dodge was the only Sedan game in town.

And the problem persisted, year after year, only seeming to get worse. I've had one fleet manager tell me he's seen cam/lifter failure under 50k miles. Another told me he had done the repair twice on a car he was auction under 100k miles. The result is, they've simply had it.

But backin up a tic, did I actually say I just bought a hemi charger? You read me right I did, something I said I'd never do. Well, hear me out.

I've owned two V6 Chargers and I thought they were decently powered. Both had front end (ball joints tie rods struts) problems but the repairs weren't crippling. I sold both quickly for good profits because knuckleheaded 20 year old males gobble them up. But I swore to avoid the dreaded hemi.

Well, I still sorta did. The cam and lifter curse only came on in 2009 with the introduction of Dodge's VVT engine. And in fairness to Dodge, the GM engines that also have VVT or its equivalent ALSO have cam and lifter issues (notably the 6.0 Holden Caprice police car) and just like the Dodge they suffer and start to have issues at about 100K miles thanks to excessive idling.

I bought a 2007 Charger Hemi with old engine that is not prone to the cam and lifter tick. Sure enough, when I picked it up it sounded and ran fine. 87K miles, a black and white with excellent ding-free exterior and near new Firehawk tires that's going straight to movie duty. I'm pretty pleased with this car even though it's a dodge.

Now older Chargers also have their problems. They're more prone to front end wear and they all have the power steering pump issue which is a $450 part (Ouch!). But the big crippling curse of the C&L is not an issue. So I bought it... for $3500.

Which is more than I'd pay for a 2007 B&W P71 with the same mileage for sure. (About $2k for the Vic, I'd think.) Of course if I gussy both of them up, and paint the white bits black, I'd get $4k for the vic but $8k+ for the Charger. So basically I can't afford to paint the Vic and still make money, but I can paint the Charger and walk away with a few g's. That's why I bought it. In the meantime, it does movie duty.

But to be honest, I'd rather have the Vic and drive the vic. As cheap as our P71 interiors are, the Charger's are cheaper. Visibility better in the Vic, comfort better, reliability much better. Yes, the hemi gets up and goes, but this is just not important to me any more.

Those are my thoughts anwyay. Now we wait for the poobahs to tell me I'm wrong on each and every count.

Not this time. I agree with everything you said about those Chryslers - especially the gun-slit windows.

I want to buy a hemi charger, still haven't gotten around to it. Some people swear by them. Not fleet managers.
Vast selection of 2011-2015 chargers at the auction now from local departments, they're all ticking.