subject: Crown Victoria's 4.6 liter V8 engine [print this page] For buyers looking for the mystique and nostalgia of the old Ford Crown Victoria, long held car of choice for police forces everywhere, they won't be likely to find them anywhere but the police station or the local junk yard, and soon not even at the police station. The Ford Crown Victoria is on its way out.
In fact, it's been on its way out for several years now. 2007 was the last time Ford produced the Crown Victoria for consumer consumption. Since then, the vehicle has been relegated strictly to police forces, and with gas prices rising they'll likely begin disappearing from police forces very quickly now, to be completely gone by 2012. That is because the Crown Victory just can't compete with modern notions of gas mileage.
Laboring under a mighty two tons of weight, the vehicle only manages to step out with reasonable sprightliness under the influence of a 220 horse power V8 engine which drinks up fuel at the rate of a gallon every 18 miles or so. Once upon a time, the roomy interior, spacious trunk, and overall dependability compensated for that cost, but consumers and policeman feeling the budget crunch don't have a hard time doing the math, and with gasoline promising to climb back over three dollars a gallon, it is expensive to run a vehicle like that constantly, as highway patrols must to be effective.
Basically, the design of the Crown Victoria, little changed since it rolled off the lot in the 1960s, is obsolete. The materials and building methods of the Crown Victoria both use stable, functional, technology, which continues to become ever more inefficient in comparison to modern building methods, materials, and technologies. In fact, rather than relying on the Crown Victoria's 4.6 liter V8 engine and 224 horsepower, many police fleets have turned to the Dodge Charger which puts out 340 horse power and still manages to get better gas mileage.
