I once had to ride in the back seat of a white crown vic, but that's another story..... :-D
Posted on 09/15/2011 7:54:27 PM PDT by Olog-hai
I can no longer tell the make of a car by looking. All I see are cookie cutter bubble shapes. Damn, miss the days when cars had distinctive body designs.
Wife keeps making noise about getting one with a full size 8’ bed. They want a freaken fortune for them.
If you’re shopping for a used car, take a long, serious look at the ‘97 Chevy Lumina. It’s a mid-sized sedan with decent room for five; has a very spacious trunk, drives nicely, and is quite comfortable. Mine’s still on the road at nearly 300K miles. Chevrolet sold MANY of these as fleet vehicles; some law enforcement departments have used them, and they’re everywhere so parts are readily available.
There are two important design flaws with the car that you need to know about:
1. Before 60,000mi, replace the stock intake manifold gaskets with a five-layer aftermarket set from Fel-Pro. The stock gaskets can’t handle the differential expansion rate between the iron black and aluminum intake. Catastrophic failure will get you water in your oil, and vice-versa; a recipe for disaster.
2. “Kit” the overdrive torque converter lock-up circuit in the transmission. The geniuses at GM put a cylindrical steel piston in a horizontal aluminum bore. Approaching 100k miles, the steel wears the bore slightly oval, fluid begins to get past the piston, and the overdrive won’t stay locked-up; it starts slipping, and if you let it go, you’ll be in for a complete transmission rebuild. There’s a great deal of labor getting the transmission out and back in; the front sub-frame has to come off, but fix it right, you’re set for 150,000 miles.
Other than those two items, since I bought the car in the fall of 1997, I’ve replaced the factory original starter, power steering pump, and fuel pump assembly. All the rest has been basic maintenance (oil, brakes, tires, occasional battery, etc).
Full disclosure:
I ended up doing intake gaskets twice because the really good set wasn’t out, yet, when I had them done the first time. At about 250K miles I replaced the original transmission, which I’d had kitted over 100k miles earlier, with a factory rebuilt unit warranted by GM for 3 years of 100K miles,whichever comes first. This car’s my daily driver, still gets 24-25mpg commuting (combination of stop-n-go traffic and 75mph freeway driving), the interior and body are holding up VERY well, and I’m aiming for 400K miles.
Baloney. I can get closer to 28 MPG on my '98 Town Car if I don't dive like Mario Andretti. I guess I will have to drop crate motors in after I blow the one that's in it to keep it on the road. I refuse to drive a POS mini car to abide by the Regimes ridiculous CAFE standards. What a bunch of $#!t.
I suggest you rethink your fantasy about the GM A bodies being reliable cars.
I had an ‘84 Celebrity with the bulletproof 2.8 V6 from 1994 to 1997 The engine was the only reliable piece on the car... and one thing it could be relied upon to do was to rattle hard enough to break the upper,front engine brace every 20K miles or so (and then the other braces would fail one by one until they were all fixed).
The brakes were complete crap with premium front pads gone in about 10k miles and standard grade in 5K or less. I became expert at fast brake pad changes with that car and gave up on turning the rotors. One time the caliper seized and the disk was glowing red when I pulled over... about five minutes later the brake line exploded. The worst was for all that, the brakes were mushy and it took a while to stop. The car always wanted to pull away from me at stop lights unless I stood on the brakes, so I developed a habit of taking it out of gear.
Two of the three spark plugs against the fire wall were near impossible to change unless you had about 2ft of shaft on your wrench with a couple bends along the way because they were buried under the emissions control equipment.
Better have a full set of SAE and metric tools to work on it because the engineers couldn’t agree on which set to use so they used every size of both.
If I looked at a pothole the wrong way it would tear a CV boot. Even with regular inspections for them, once I found the tear even if I replaced the boot it was only a few thousand miles before it would start making a ticking noise making turns. The ticking would progress until it was ticking all the time I drove. I put off replacing the half shaft as long as I could, and still managed to get lucky enough never to lose an axle on the road. The car ate about 5 half shafts in 70K miles.
It went through a couple alternators, but they are relatively easy to replace.
I finally decided to get rid of it when the car developed a vibration up around highway speeds that wasn’t fixed with tire balancing and the engine would race a little then slam at gear changes. The final insult was the water pump taking a dump just before they guy came to buy it.
I replaced it with a brand new 1998 Ford ZX2. I realized a year of car payments were less than I had spent on a year of repairing the Celebrity. I just donated my ZX2 a few weeks ago... it was a nice little car. In all the time I had the Ford it used one set of front brake pads, one alternator, 1 battery (although it wanted a new one when I got rid of it) and suffered more than a year with some misfires until I finally got a mechanic who could find the chafed wiring harness. I’d buy a Ford again, but never a Chevy (even before it became Government Motors).
I was in CT at a Motel 6 last week and a guy spent the night there - he had a 1955 Ford Fairlane Crown Vic ALL restored to factory condition - CHERRY !!!
He was going up to a classic car rally upstate ...
Waaaaay Kewl !!!
My father-age 78-still drools at those early Crown Vics every time he sees one!
Doodge Charger in Michigan.
Yep. I drive a 2005 Ford Five Hundred. 24-25 mpg and fits 4 adults comfortably with enough room in the trunk for 6 or 7 golf bags. They call them the Taurus now...
I had a Crown Vic for 10 years,,,I really miss it.
Heck, I owned a 1989 Mustang GT - from the factory it had 225 HP and 300 pounds of torque. It got me anywhere from 15 to 19 MPG. It ran the 1/4 in bone-stock trim in the low 14s with a five-speed and me driving it (not NHRA material).
Now, the base-model Mustang is a V-6 with 305 HP and can get 31 MPG on the highway. Heck, the 302/5.0 now also pumps out 412 HP and has a claimed 26 highway MPG. Both ride better, stop better, have more creature comforts, and will last longer with similar maintenance than their 60s counterparts.
The one I’m looking at has the GM “Iron Duke 2.5L” engine in it. Mom had one in her 1989 Skylark and it was a good engine and the car itself didn’t cost too much to maintain. Wish we kept that car.
The average medium size sedan today can easily be equipped to outrun and outhandle anything but the most awesome of '50s and '60s iron.
I used to own a 1998 Nissan Maxima that had only a couple of mild suspension mods, plus bigger tires than stock.
A neighbor of mine had a '66 Vette - we agreed to see which was faster over a point-to-point country road run. He beat me by less than 15 seconds out of ten minutes.
Recently test drove a Hyundai Genesis Coupe. 0-60 in under seven seconds, handles like a go-cart, and priced in the mid $20s.
Mind you, I'd still love to drive a tri-power GTO or a Hemi Roadrunner (or especially (drool) a Cobra Daytona) if I had the chance....but the idea that today's cars are performance impaired is, I think, a myth.
I am in my 40’s and bought a used 2006 Merc Grand Marq. a couple years back. My wife calls it my old farts car but I love it. Plenty of room, rides great and lots of power and I get 17 mpg in the city and 24 on the hwy, I can live with that.
My Dad, son and mother-in-law all managed to tear their one of their knees up this summer and all wanted me to take them to the hospital and back and forth to therapy in the Merc because it had so much room.
My Dad has a pontiac montana that is falling apart but he won’t buy a new vehicle because he is afraid to turn loose of any money with boy blunder in the white house.
Still every time Dad rides in my Merc Grand Marq. he goes on how he loves that car and wouldn’t mind having one.
Re your post #17, in 1963 I had a 1957 Ford Crown Victoria in black and white with gold trim. What a beauty! And it drove like a dream.
When I compare it to the little match boxes that so many drive in around today I think uggh.
I also take VERY good care of it. 25 mpg at 70 mph.
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