Why Every Department Switched To The Taurus And Then Regretted It
The Ford Crown Victoria was the police car from 1992 until about 2011, pretty much without question. When Ford killed the Crown Vic, departments panicked. There was no V8 RWD sedan left to buy for patrol work. The Taurus was the only thing on the table that came close, and honestly, it ended up being good enough. That's the whole story in one sentence. The PI7000 Police Interceptor Edition Taurus hit the market around 2010 as a interim solution. Ford took a regular midsize sedan, reinforced the suspension, added heavy-duty cooling, threw in a 3.5L V6, and called it a day. The expectation was that it would serve until something better came along. It served for roughly twelve years. That alone tells you how bad the alternatives were. What actually made it work wasn't any heroic engineering. It was economics. A Crown Vic pulled $30,000 to $40,000 per unit when outfitted. The Taurus PI ran closer to $28,000 to $32,000. Fuel economy doubled. A Crown Vic got maybe 14 to 16 mpg doing real police work with the siren and A/C running. The Taurus did 22 to 25. Over a five-year fleet cycle, that saved departments hundreds of thousands in fuel alone. That's not a metaphor. That's actual budget math.
The interior was another factor people don't talk about enough. The Crown Vic's cabin was enormous. You could stretch out in it. The Taurus interior was tight, but the seating position was better for officers who are six feet tall or more. The higher hip point meant easier entries and exits from the vehicle, which matters more than you'd think when you're doing twenty calls a shift. But here's where it gets complicated. The Taurus never truly replaced the Crown Victoria in terms of durability. It was always the compromise option. The front suspension geometry on the Taurus PI wasn't designed for sustained high-speed pursuits the way the Crown Vic's was. You could do it, but you'd wear out control arm bushings and ball joints in about 40,000 to 50,000 miles if you were running hard corners. A Crown Vic would do 80,000 easy. I learned that the hard way with a 2013 PI that I ran for two years straight. The front ends were shot by mile 47,000. I started sourcing aftermarket reinforced control arms from Steeda and that added another 15,000 miles before the second replacement was needed. The 3.5L V6 got decent power for normal driving. Zero to sixty in about eight seconds. But once you add a roof light bar, siren box, mobile computer, and three officers, that engine starts feeling strained on highway pursuits above 85 mph. The transmission also ran hot under sustained load. Ford added a larger oil cooler and a separate transmission cooler, but it still wasn't the same thermal capacity as the Crown Vic's 4.6L modular V8, which could take abuse for years without issues. The Taurus would throw a code P0711 (transmission fluid temperature too high) after three or four hard pursuits in a row during summer months. You'd pull over, idle it for ten minutes, and try again. It happened more often than anyone outside a patrol car wants to admit.
The real downfall of the Taurus as a police vehicle became obvious around 2017. The second generation PI Taurus used a different platform with a 2.0L turbo and a 3.0L V6 option. The 2.0L was underpowered for most departments. The 3.0L V6 was better but still couldn't match the torque curve of the old Crown Vic V8 at low RPMs, which is where you actually need it for pull-ups behind suspects and rapid acceleration from a standstill. By 2019, the industry had largely moved on to the Police Interceptor Utility, which is basically a Expedition-based SUV. The Taurus was already phased out of most new orders by then. One thing nobody warns you about: the electrical system on the Taurus PI was a nightmare to work on. The Crown Vic had a simple, almost primitive wiring harness. You could splice a light bar relay in ten minutes with basic knowledge. The Taurus uses a whole CAN bus architecture with modules everywhere. Adding aftermarket equipment required scanning tools and software that most shop technicians didn't have access to. I spent three days chasing a phantom battery drain on a 2014 PI that turned out to be a faulty door module drawing 80 milliamps. The Crown Vic equivalent problem would have taken forty-five minutes to find. The Taurus also had notorious paint and body panel issues. The plastic bumper covers warped in hot weather and cracked in cold. Panel gaps shifted over time, and water would leak into the trunk area through the rear light assembly seals. It sounds minor until you're dealing with a ruined console computer from a flooded trunk. Ford eventually addressed some of these with revised seal designs, but the earlier models from 2010 to 2013 were particularly rough.
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If you're looking at a used Taurus PI today, the ones from 2014 to 2016 are the best balance of refinement and simplicity. Avoid the 2010 to 2012 models if you can. The early software glitches and suspension weaknesses were worst in that window. And whatever you do, don't buy one with over 100,000 miles unless you're prepared to replace the timing chains, the entire front suspension, and probably the transmission cooler lines. Those things wear out in concert because they're all stressed by the same inadequate cooling system. The Taurus did its job. It kept police fleets running when there was no other option. It saved money on fuel and purchase price. But it was always a stopgap, and every department that bought them knew it at the time, even if they were too broke to admit it publicly.
