Before SUVs took over police departments, there was the Ford Crown Victoria — and three survivors of that era hit the auction block from Cheyenne’s city fleet this month.
They're big, boxy, V8-powered and nearly impossible to see in a rearview mirror without checking the speedometer.
They aren't glamorous anymore, but there was a time when the Crown Vic was the undisputed king of the American cop car.
Casper car aficionado Austin Griess still gets that feeling when one appears behind him.
“I wish the people that bought the old cop cars would remove the spotlight on the side,” Griess said. “Always made me nervous for a bit before you find out it's just a junior-high kid behind you. Then you're nervous for different reasons.”
The city put 2009, 2010 and 2011 Ford Crown Victoria Interceptors up for sale in its annual surplus auction, all showing scars of long lives in Wyoming, with hail damage and a cracked windshield.
Still, somebody wanted them.
The two white ones sold for $1,300 apiece. The baby-blue 2011 fetched $2,300 after 72 bids. All three stayed in Wyoming.
King Of Cop Cars
Ford had been building full-size police cars for decades when the LTD Crown Victoria police package arrived in 1983. The Crown Victoria became its own model in 1992, and police departments gobbled them up.
By 1998, the Crown Victoria police package accounted for 85% of police pursuit-vehicle sales in the United States and Canada.
For a generation of Americans, it became the silhouette of Five-O: Long hood, enormous trunk, upright roof and headlights that could inspire a brake check from a quarter-mile away.
The Crown Vic was a big, old-school, rear-wheel-drive sedan powered by a V8 and built on a separate frame rather than the unibody construction that eventually came to dominate passenger cars.
Ford kept hardening a version for the cops. Police Interceptors came with heavy-duty components designed for a life of idling, quick acceleration and long hours on patrol, including beefed-up suspension and cooling systems with upgraded electrical capacity for emergency lights, radios and computers.
“The back seats have a good amount of leg room. Seats themselves were OK, too,” Greiss says, though it was hard to get a good feel because he was sitting on his hands.
In 2003, Ford says the Crown Victoria Police Interceptor became the first vehicle in the world tested to meet a 75-mph rear-impact crash test.
Cheyenne car enthusiast Antonio Mora said the police versions are among the Crown Vics that still get enthusiasts' attention.
Crown Vics weren't exotic machines, but they're "definitely reliable vehicles,” Mora said.
He's worked on several Crown Vics himself, mostly from the 1990s and early 2000s.
“They're just a good American-made car,” Mora said. “They're pretty reliable. Not too hard to work on.”
Grandma's Getaway Car
America's quintessential cop car was also, somehow, America's quintessential grandma car.
The civilian Crown Vic was enormous, comfortable and deeply uncool in exactly the way that has started making old cars cool again.
Mora laughed at the contradiction.
“It's a really fast car, but it looks like, you know, a grandpa, grandma car,” he said.
It was the kind of sedan that looked equally at home outside a police station, an airport taxi stand or a Sunday church service.
“In the car community, we call those sleepers,” Mora said. “So it's like a really fast car, but it doesn't look like it.”
Something grandma drove to the grocery store could share its basic DNA with the cruiser that just lit up the rearview mirror.
Griess has a slightly less flattering description. It is “as car as car can be.”
“There's nothing fancy about it. There's nothing exciting about it,” he said. “Very, very much the car a kid would draw when they're imagining one. You know, four doors, four wheels, a hood and a trunk.”
Growing up in Colorado, he said they were also often used as taxis, so the same basic car could either be taking someone to jail or taking them to the airport.
The Panther Lives
The Crown Victoria belongs to Ford's Panther-platform family, alongside the Mercury Grand Marquis and Lincoln Town Car — essentially an entire clan of giant, rear-wheel-drive American sedans that disappeared as buyers moved toward crossovers and SUVs.
Ford stopped building Crown Victorias in 2011, sending one of America's last old-school, full-size sedans into history.
The Police Interceptor was retired as Ford transitioned law-enforcement customers to its next generation of police vehicles, but killing the Crown Vic didn't kill the Crown Vic crowd.
If anything, time has made the cars stranger and more interesting.
There's now an enthusiast aftermarket for them, said Mora. Owners modify suspensions and engines, preserve old Police Interceptors and hunt for clean examples of a car that was once so common that few people imagined anybody would someday bother saving one.
“They're kind of more sought-after now, just because they stopped developing those models,” he said.
The auction listings say the exterior locks will be drilled out before the Cheyenne cars are picked up.
Mora suspects that's another vestige of their police lives — the cruisers were designed not just to keep people out, but to keep people in.
Cheyenne's Survivors
Cheyenne, meanwhile, has been shedding its Crown Vics for years.
In 2024, the city auctioned five 2011 Crown Victorias in various states of decline. Some had mechanical problems. Some had been wrecked. One had a driver's floor pan rusted through.
Another pair of Crown Vics went through the city's auction in 2025.
A number of Cheyenne's 2011 cars have VINs ending within just a handful of numbers of one another, suggesting they arrived together as part of a fleet purchase.
City Fleet staff told Cowboy State Daily they were used as Cheyenne Police Department patrol vehicles, and they've lasted long enough to see their replacements get old.
Cheyenne's current surplus auction includes Ford Tauruses from 2013, 2014 and 2016 — descendants of the generation of police cars that followed the Crown Victoria into law enforcement.
For decades, the Crown Vics idled for hours and bounced over curbs. They were modified, repaired, repainted, stripped of police equipment and eventually pushed to the back of municipal lots.
What was once ordinary is now extinct, and that's familiar territory for Griess.
Earlier this year, he introduced Cowboy State Daily to his lifted 1984 AMC Eagle, a self-described “chick magnet” and Bigfoot-hunting rig.
To him, a cheap old Crown Vic offers the same fundamental opportunity.
“If you buy them right, then the world is your oyster," Griess said, recommending a convertible modification with a trailer hitch.
Kolby Fedore can be reached at kolby@cowboystatedaily.com.
