Thats interesting to me. I spent quite some time recently in NYC, and one of the things I noticed is just how many different vehicles they have doing government or police work. They make police cars out of anything there it seems, specifically, larger trucks and vans. Aside from these weird kinds of police vehicles, all I remember seeing in NYC were explorers and Impalas. Didnt see any Tahoes. Did not see any chargers, but I did not venture out of the city either. You'd think with the conditions of the life a police vehicle has in NYC it'd be the most reliable thing they can find. That's why I was a bit surprised to see so many impalas.

Also update on prices near me: no crown Vics in our recent State patrol auction, but in my state we primarily have chargers or F150/250s as state patrol vehicles anyways. Two 2015 chargers for sale. 1 with 145k, 1 with 133k. No hours "known" on either of them. Black cars with torn apart interiors, good tires, good bodies. Videos of them idling indicate no tick nor lights on dash. Was looking at them, but prices soared quickly. 145k went for over 7k before taxes and fees. 133k went for $9,020 without taxes.

Crazy prices for auction around here.

Money is bottom line when operating a fleet. Reliability doesn't mean much in the big cities as long as it's not some anomaly where it's so bad they can't complete their duty, which isn't likely from any of the major fleet offerings.
The big cities have the resources to maintain their own vehicles. That makes maintenance super incredibly cheap, relatively speaking.

For them, the biggest vehicle cost is depreciation of the vehicle. Purchase price vs resale price is the question. They'll buy anything as long as the numbers work in their favor. This is the biggest reason the Tahoe gained so much ground as soon as it was introduced, long before the CVPI was discontinued. The depreciation costs were far less.

Smaller towns that don't maintain their own vehicles will have a different view, perhaps prioritizing maintenance costs more. Even then, it seems there's not much of a difference between all of the available vehicles. You see a mix of everything being used out there. I'm sure the bidding process has a lot to do with that.

Poughkeepsie's as close as I'm ever going to get to New York City.

Chicago is about as close as I ever intend to get to Noo Yawk City...

Well I gotta go to Poughkeepsie tomorrow, so . . .





Guess I'm never gonna meet you.

Another thing going for the big city fleet is just that, an equally big fleet of pool cars. If a few are down for repair, no one hurts for a ride, revolving door of broken and repaired cars.

https://www.publicsurplus.com/sms/auction/view?auc=2911043 https://www.publicsurplus.com/sms/auction/view?auc=2911045 Two more for you all. Wonder how high these two are going to go. Probably decently high even though they both must have decent rust being the floor pan has had rust fixed on both. Lot# 2911043 doesn't have it listed but it's in the service records

Ive said it before and I'll say it again- The amount of bad chargers at auction now is about the same ratio of junk Crown Vics back when they were mostly what made up auctions. Tahoes have the same cam problems Chargers do. Taurusceptors have other problems. The only plus about Crown Vics is they were cheaper to fix but that's how things go with newer cars. If a Crown Vic is in decent shape with no obvious signs of problems and doesn't go for a rip off price I'd have no problem buying one. For Chargers and any of the others even if they look to be ok they have to go for a good enough price that you aren't loosing money on them if they have issues and if you can do that get one because they are super fun to drive. Actually these days it's not too hard because greedy car lots are selling them for more then double the crazy auction prices.

The cam problem isn't an oiling issue it's defective roller lifters. Youd think that when they've been used in large numbers of cars for the past 30 years they'd have it figured out by now but it's a problem that a lot of newer vehicles are having.

There's no problem with AWD durability fuel mileage is the reason they moved it to the V6. AWD was still using the 5 speed transmission and AWD was a popular option. Move it to the V6 and they could finally put the newer transmission behind the hemi and steer people towards the V6 models at the same time.

The mileage kills them from climbing too high in price, but they do appear to be what the lister claims they are... solid daily drivers in good shape, will lots of work done recently (brakes, rotors, bearing, axles transmission etc) that would make them relatively trouble free for their age. It's amazing how many sets of tires these cars have gone through in their lives, basically at least 2 per year of life. Strange that they have rust underneath but no peeling paint.

Looking through the service records is interesting, in a way.
Started life getting fed 15w40, and around the 50k mark is getting 5w20, and back to 15w40 near 70k, and back to 5w20 a few oil changes later. That ought to make the oil ocd'ers twitch. =-)

And this note made me chuckle;

While I disagree wholeheartedly with 2007CrownVic on both the relative quality of chargers versus crown Vics coming to auction and the source of the cam/lifter failure problem…. there are some things that we agree on. I agree that all the police vehicles which utilize a VVT engine (including the Tahoes and the Caprices) suffer from cam and lifters problems at very early ages. This argues in favor of something in the police method of using the vehicles that is hard on the cams, not to some metallurgical defect in the manufacture of the cars that is spread amongst different manufacturers.

As for what causes cam and lifter failure in Chargers, you don’t have to listen to either one of us, you can go straight to the Internet and weigh all of the many arguments in this long-running debate on all sides and make up your own mind. What all the theorists agree upon is the cost of the repair, which remains unchanged at around $4000 no matter what causes it. And yes it is cheaper if you do it yourself just as the Crown Vic intake manifold repair is proportionally cheaper if you do it yourself.

I cannot speak to the relative percentages shot-out Crown Vics hitting the auction market 10 years ago compared to the relative percentages of shot-out Chargers hitting the market now because I wasn’t shopping for either car at auction 10 years ago. I will have to take 2007Crownvics word for that. All I can go by is my own experience and what I am experiencing in my conversations with the many fleet managers with whom I have talked to regarding this issue. They all universally pine for the old days when they had crown vics in their fleets and at the same time they nurse the few remaining warhorse vics that are still running for as long as they possibly can because they love them and they give them no trouble. At the same time I’ve spoken to three Utah fleet managers this year alone who have told me they are sick of chargers and they are purging their entire fleet of them regardless of mileage, including the state of Utah’s entire highway patrol fleet.

Then there is the ultimate barometer that everyone should go by, meaning one’s own personal first-hand experience. I have owned 14 crown Victorias and Mercury Marquis that I bought at auction from police agencies. On those cars I have done no mechanical repairs to the vast majority of my fleet and on the few cars that I did have to repair the largest repairs were front wheel bearings and brakes on one car, a transmission flush and filter on a second car, blend door actuators on two more cars, and then your usual assortment of horn reconnects, window motors and door switches etc. on a half dozen other cars on other cars. that’s it… On 14 cars.

On the other hand all three chargers went straight from the seller to my auto shop for necessary repairs right out of the gate, two via triple AAA tows because they didn’t make it home on my drives from their local Utah sellers to my house. The two vsixes both had front end suspension issues averaging about $750 and the hemi is still in the shop with a seized AC compressor, cost tbd.

So I have managed to avoid the big repair bills in both cases probably because I am very conservative in the cars that I choose to bid on, but across-the-board the chargers cost me more money to get ready than the vics.

Lmao didn't pick that one out. But yeah the records are strange. Probably whatever oil they bought for the shop it was fed

Yeah I wouldn't mind getting one of them personally. I'm probably being over-paranoid about the floor pan thing

Guess it has had rust repair before other than the floorboard. But yeah somewhat odd it hasn't started peeling yet