Drove back to FL today from Birmingham AL. Gassed up in Dothan, spotted a white Grand Marquis leaving the pumps just ahead of me. "Old man," thinks I, "you must have a serious CB habit to have that thickassed trunk-mounted antenna instead of a magnet-mounted removable."
I check out the Marquis' rear three quarter view more closely as we continue south, smoothing along near the posted limit. Hmm. Base-trim Mercury wheel covers? Check. Definitely Marquis tail light lenses. Maybe the owner is a traveling salesman trying to represent like a P71 for S&Gs.
Waitasec. A police cage? How did I miss that?
Officer Unmarked brakes and one-eigthties into a median turnabout and I give his car another once-over on the pass-by: def a Marquis, has the fou-fou grille. Not-an-old-guy driver is wearing a uniform, so also def a LEO. City Police Chief or County Sheriff, I guess.
Crown Vics are retiring and there isn't an uplevel brother for the Police Charger or Chevy PPV sedan; smoke 'em if you got 'em, officer. So, will his next fleet purchase be a Denali/Escalade twin to the Tahoe PPV?
Yup, you get Grand Marquis P72's (I don't know if they did the full-zoot P71 Interceptor), our local State Patrol has 2 of them, a maroon one and a green one. Very sneaky.
P72? Wow. It's cool to learn new things.
IIRC, P72 is "Taxi" package.
P74 is civilian/regular, P73 is Taxi/Fleet, P72 is standard patrol, P71 is the Interceptor.
except the "P" letter of the vin on the mercurys is "M"
I thought it would be clever to swap all the p71 bits to a marquis and put M71 SPEC on the plates
Javelin wrote:
P74 is civilian/regular, P73 is Taxi/Fleet, P72 is standard patrol, P71 is the Interceptor.
IIRC P74 is Sport & Lux, P73 is standard, P72 is general fleet, P71 is CVPI. There should be no distinguishable differences between a "standard patrol" and a "taxi/fleet". Who knows. That's silly E36 M3 anyway.
There are a few detective units around here that run a Grand Marquis. Nothing special, just a fixed antenna mount. I was thinking about putting the Merc trimming on my P71, but I'm planning on doing a P74 disguise. Maybe it was a P71 with some Merc trimmings eh? Should have stopped him to check the vin. 
