That's for sure, expect Chad's examples pulled in with police package Impala's...so those are probably just as stripped as the units in service.

 

Well shit, if I was driving a base model Astro work van 1000 miles a week, it wouldn't be nearly as "enjoyable" as my AWD Astro LS, with all the features.

 

No one wants to take their work home. When I worked in IT, the last thing I wanted to do was use Windows at home.

 

^^^This is what one friend-of-the-family policeman said after I asked him when I ran into him at the bar. The last thing he wants to do is drive home in the same vehicle he just finished his shift in.

 

It must be so awesome to be right all the time!

Your right, people are never passionate about what they do at work. That is why most cops don't collect guns, drafters don't have their own CAD software at home, software engineers don't write programs for the hell of it, nurses don't bandage their own kids scraped knees, carpenters work on their own houses, taxidermists mount their own kills... Etc.

What a sad world you live in.

~HJ

 

Tell you one thing I do know... many LEOs were none to happy moving from Crown Vics to those damned Impalas, especially the early 2000s ones.

 

I wonder how many police officers are really into their work compared to those who simply do it for the paycheck. While I've heard of a few police officers saying good things about Crown Vics, I've never heard praise for the FWD Impala.

GM must have given those away for $1 over cost.

 

I wonder how many police officers are really into their work compared to those who simply do it for the paycheck.

I think that depends on the municipality you work for. Some real slow and quiet suburban area is probably pretty enjoyable. The city of Milwaukee is a completely different bag. One of the two buddies of mine still aren't in a police job because they both refused to apply to Milwaukee, where, unfortunately, getting shot at is pretty routine. Milwaukee ALWAYS has openings, having trouble keeping guys permanent.

 

^More like paid the municipalities to take the things off GM's hands.

 

I'll take John's word for it, as his dad was a cop and he personally knows many police in the areas he grew up in.

When I got pulled over this last January for doing 94 in a 60, I talked to the cop for a while about his Charger squad car. I asked him what it had for an engine and how he liked it (this was after he very nicely gave me a ticket for doing 79/60, not 94/60, as it was about a $250 price difference), and he said it has the Hemi, and it was his favorite squad car he's ever had, but it wasn't as quite as durable as the Crown Victoria he previously had.

 

I'll take John's word for it, as his dad was a cop and he personally knows many police in the areas he grew up in.

Ahh, well that makes sense.

The Charger is so ugly as a civilian car, but as a cop car its perfect.

Looks like GM is finally stepping up with a RWD Caprice:
http://www.motortrend.com/features/...m/features/auto_news/2010/112_1003_cop_car_wars_heat_up/caprice_e7_charger.html

 

Old news bro, old news.

The Caprice PPV will be a sweet ride as an auction car. I'd drive it.

 

How many people live in Milwaukee?

 

1 million or so, with well over average crime rates. Murder around here is insane. Here is some older data:

http://www.cityrating.com/citycrime.asp?city=Milwaukee&state=WI

Thankfully, the crime rates have been on a steady decline for the past 2 years or so, so that's good.

Seeing first hand some of the stuff that goes on around here has to be really hard on a policeman emotionally. Personally, I don't think I could do it.

 

Wow, 594k in Milwaukee proper. That's about 220,000 more than Minneapolis proper and 350,000 more than St. Paul proper.

I guess I always thought that Minnesota had the greater population, but my uncle who lives in Chippewa Falls told me that Wisconsin has a bigger population, but it doesn't seem so because all of it's big cities are more spread out than they are in Minnesota. Upon checking Wikipedia, Minnesota's total population is 5.2 million, and Wisconsin's is 5.6 million.

 

Minnesota's total population is 5.2 million, and Wisconsin's is 5.6 million.

As a quick reference, there's about twice that many people in Los Angeles COUNTY alone (about 1/3 of CA's total population).

'70s Chryslers were probably the worst of the Detroit Three. They could be relied upon to fall apart in short order.

 

Surely the Mpls/St. Paul metro area is bigger than Milwaukee's....? However, eventually, Milwaukee and Chicago will just become one big city, more than they already are now...

 

Anyways, back to the topic of old Chryslers, we've discussed their lack of overall quality in the '80s models, but was it so bad for the big beasts built in the 1970s? I always liked the 1969-73 Imperials, and the redesigned 1974-75 Imperials, and then the 1976-78 New Yorker Broughams, but seeing as how they're increasingly hard to find nowadays in good condition, are they a good car to pick up or are they a major PITA like the '80s models?

 

It would surprise me if an Imperial's build quality was as good as a comparable Lincoln or Cadillac, but maybe I'm wrong.

I do like those big ass coupes like Sandy posts pics of from time to time.....

 

Well, I've got my foot in the door when it comes to Mopar classics with my '66 Dodge, but this makes me no expert...

However, I do notice when looking at my own and cruising the junkyards, classic mopars really weren't great quality under the skin, but it's stuff you'd never realize until it was broken. An example? The interior temperature and fan control is broken on mine. I took it apart to find that the design is really...childish. It's a collection of seemingly randomly placed linkage that looks like it could have been designed by a 2nd grader with a glue stick and some popsicle sticks. I later found out that similar construction was used behind the dashboards of many '60's-70's era mopars, not just the trucks. I also find that Chrysler really never kept everything neat and orderly - while GM and Ford were pretty good about looming and bracketing wiring, hoses, and various lines, Chrysler liked to kind of hook everything up and let 'er rip in comparison.

I don't see any terrible quality issues that would stop the cars in their tracks and keep them from being reliable cruisers. Outside of the old Carter carburetors (which were no where NEAR as nice as GM's Rochester units), Chrysler's 318/340/360 small block as well as the 383/440 big block have reps for extreme durability, even under extreme conditions, as well as the 727 Torqueflite and the 8-3/4 rear ends that will be most common under the big Imperials. However, little nuances like the one described above can be a concern.

 

I think Drew's comments are quite to the point. My experience with Chrysler products of the 1970's certainly confirms his views about Chrysler quality being skin deep, if that. Despite "Corinthian Leather" and other icing that the higher end Chrysler products applied to give them "Showroom" appeal, their cars really were pretty cheap and the designs rather "kitschy." While the engines had a reputation for longevity I couldn't tolerate the general disintegration that the body and interior experienced in a couple of years, to keep them longer than that period. Also the transmissions had a reputation for giving serious trouble early in their lives.

In all fairness though, the first car that I owned (other than the Lamborghini) that was still as tight and showed little wear after two years use was my '76 Seville. That car hung together in beautiful shape and never gave any trouble for over nine years of my ownership. My friend's '77 Fleetwood also showed the same staying power as my Seville. So in the seventies at least Cadillac had caught on that "quality" was actually important after all, when selling "luxury" cars.

For those who still maintain that cars were (Cadillacs in particular) better built back in the '50s, Google "1956 Cadillac" and read the "Popular Mechanics" test report. Owners of these cars were very vocal about the poor fit and finish and general quality of their "new" cars. Sloppy assembly was a reason that European and Japanese cars of the 1960's gained a reputation for high quality and continued to gain market share from that point onward.

 

The State Troopers in Connecticut have their Crown Vics as take home cars. Everyone I've spoken to loves them. Big, fast, comfortable and dependable in all types of weather/situations.

Todays cruisers have come along way from the days of base model Bel Airs or Galaxies. But I'm sure there are many LEOs that want to drive something different on their own time just to see a different dashboard.

 

Chrysler's engines and TorqueFlight transmissions had reputations for being bulletproof. Unfortunately, the rest of the car was pretty shoddy from what I've seen an read. GM used to have an excellent reputation for build quality, but that started to decline by the late 60s. My family's '64 Impala was much better built and solid than the '70 Bel Air wagon. More reliable, too. We kept the Impala for 17 years, but the Bel Air for only six.

 

We got 8 inches of wet, heavy snow today in the Twin Cities. I rode in my buddy's '02 Crown Victoria LX and then my buddy's '92 Roadmaster Limited. The Crown Victoria, with it's limited slip rear axle and traction control was a lot better in the snow than the Roadmaster. The Roadmaster had trouble accelerating from a dead stop due to the TBI 5.7's excessive low end torque and the open rear end. Once up and rolling, the Roadmaster did OK but the CV was still a lot more confident on the road, at speed.

 

Tell your friend to throw about 100lbs of sand or weights in the trunk of his Roadmaster. I did that in my Brougham, thing was unstoppable in the snow.

 

My '93 RM was TERRIBLE in the snow and not very good in the rain -- even w/new tires.

I think I'm going to get snow tires for one of the wagons...

 

Well damn it, I guess there's no real concrete reason what so ever to buy a '70s Imperial over a '70s Cadillac or Lincoln.

 

The Imperial will outhandle the other two. Other than that, you have to really love the Imperial's styling. Even given the Imperial's low sales numbers relative to Cadillac and Lincoln, you still see far more 70s Cads and Lincolns roaming about than Imperials. Come to think on it, I haven't seen a 70s Imperial outside of a car show in ages (not counting the one I found in the j-yard a couple months ago), and even that's been a while.

Pre-77 cars from all makes were more prone to rust than later cars. Water-trapping vinyl tops didn't help the cause. The 77+ cars seem to have made dramatic strides in rust retardation. HJ is totally right about the build quality of the older cars. Really, it didn't get appreciably better in American cars until the late 80s. My 77 has some of the funkiest panel gaps ever. The factory even fudged the pinstripe on the driver's side as it transitions from the hood to the door because the panel gap is so wide and so off, if they'd done it right, it would have looked wrong! They were bolted together to be "good enough", and for several decades, until people saw that better was possible, it was enough.

 

No, no way...

 

Those Imperials, especially the 1974-75's, have so much physical appeal, and it all sounds so good, but in the real world, they just don't stand up like the others, especially after 35 years.

 

The 70's full size Chryslers were what they were. GM bolted together some really tough cars in the 70's, I'm not such a great believer in anything made by Ford back then other than their pickups, and the Chryslers, to me, are on the same level as the Ford stuff, the difference is the smaller production of the Chrysler products and resluting fewer survivors which makes them unique and very appealing to me. I would have a hard time believing the Chrysler boats would be that much more difficult to maintain than any of the other old tubs of the day.