As much as I love GM cars and especially Chevy's, I have to say that the police officers in St. Louis will totally agree with you. They are not happy with the Chevy'sit is so bad that the St. Louis County police department (the biggest department in the area with many different stations) refuses to buy anymore Chevy products. From now on they will only buy the Ford Crown Vics. They are tired of their cars being in the shop.

rysZ34, you make a good point, these cars are driven much harder than any civilian car, but so are the Fords, and the Fords are not having these problems with getting transmissions constantly replaced. Every Impala officer that I talked to said they wish they had the Ford. Because of reliability, rear-wheel-drive and V8power.

 

No front wheel drive car is made to be beaten on like a police cruiser is. That said, the 4t65e transmission isnt exactly the best transaxle made. I had to have mine rebuilt about a month ago at 38000 miles. It was because of a failed solenoid, which is a common problem with these transmissions. Any rwd car will fair better because of the design of the transmission, so its no wonder why the cops like the crown vics better. I had a 1993 f150 with the weaker auto transmission available and at 170,000 miles it was on its original tranny and tho it shuttered and clunked a bit, it would go anywhere and take any abuse I gave it. It was even used to tow a boat for its first 150,000 miles. We also have a 90 gmc suburban with 160,000 miles and tow a trailer with it. It also goes and goes and goes, then when its done, it goes some more. Our 93 capricewagon is the same with 120,000 miles on it. Any transmission has the capability to last a lifetime if taken care of. RWD trannies have a better chance, but I have seen some people with well over 100,000 on their gm fwd cars with no problems. If I were an automaker, I would never take the chance of losing the police's faith by offering them a fwd car to abuse. There is only one likely outcome of that, and its not good. If GM still made the caprice I bet the cops would be all over them. I know I wouldnt mind having one, I would really like a mid 90s impala too.

 

The Caprice was a great Police car. I saw a special on tv about Police cars and they said the Caprice was voted the all time favorite police car by most departments. My cousin who is a cop in Chicago said that some of their departments still have a few Caprices, they just repair them and kep driving them because they love them. Those had Corvette engines in them.

 

The Caprices are very good cars. Here's a funny story about a Crown Vic. I agree, the CV: Police Interceptor (P71 packaged Crown Vic) is a better vehicle than the Impala because the components are specially built where as the Impalas just have stock parts with more coolers added on. lol. So here's my story: I'm at a call with my fire department and the police were called because it was a drunk driver who pulled over to the side of the road to puke and have an asthma attack...So we're sitting doing the paper work and all of a sudden we here a "pssss...." noise, I look at the Crown Vic sheriff's car (4,500 miles at this time, BRAND NEW) and it blew a radiator hose....No, I like CV's though.

 

Try hitting a curb at 50+ MPH with a front wheel drive and I don't care which model you have something is going to fail. Even on the Crown Vic a wheel, bearing, A-Arm or something is going to get damaged in the front end, but the repair will cost less. You can't outrun a radio so sometimes it is best for the boys in blue to back off and re-think some of the chases they get themselves into. Apparently the departments have put two and two together and figured the fuel savings on a Impala exceeds the transmission repair bills and that is why they purchase them. Contrary to the original poster of this threads opinion(Along with who he rode with), I see many more Impalas beating the streets around here then any other manufacture building the cop cars. Just cause St. Louis feels this way doesn't mean the whole country is heading in this direction.

 

I don't know why departments don't switch to Tahoe PPV's. (Police Packaged Vehicles) They have a special suspension, sit lower than a regular 2 wheel drive Tahoe, are bigger, get better gas mileage than a Crown Vic and just look sweet as a cruiser. They are actually very good in the snow and are very, very fast.

 

Plenty of the Tahoes and Impalas here in Wyoming, along with a few Chargers on the highway and some Crown Vic's in some towns.

Last time I looked I had 57k on my car, being my first car it's gotten it's share of abuse seems how the first car I drove was dad's '71 Camaro and I like to have a bit of fun. My tranny still seems to be in pretty good shape, when I changed the fluid and filter nothing seemed bad, the fluid looked almost as good as the brand new stuff going back in.

So far so good, and when everything fails I'll retire the Monte, do some sorta engine swap and probably set it aside as a show car after plenty of work on the body and interior.

 

I drive like the police. I always have. I have wrecked every vehicle I have ever owned ( the count so far is 9) and I have blown transmissions in more cars than I can count. To include Chevrolet, Ford and Dodge. I love my 06 5.3 Monte but at 22,000 I have already had transmission problems. I am in Germany and drive the Autobahn daily so I cruise at around 110mph avarage. When I push the car to 140 and continue for more than 5 to 10 minutes the transmission will go into what I like to call crap mode. It acts just like a transmission that is going out. Bands wearing out and such. It will begin to hang in one gear and shift hard only after I jerk the car by slaming on the gas and letting off. Once I turn the car off it all goes away. Something is getting hot and hanging I think. I hope to have this remedied by the dealer when Itake it in for warrenty service. I do have my share ofopinions I would like to throw in the ring though. I would like to say first that I have strong opinions and I am sure to start something here. I appologize if I offend anyone. That being said, here we go.

1. Front wheel drivecars areSTUPID. I hate them and the only reason I bought onewas becuaseit was thebest thing I could afford.

2. Chevy must have pulled from thefifth string of enginers to find someonewho would say that putting front wheel drive on a car this big was a good idea. It was done beforewith theToreno. Ford learned their lesson.

3. If you don't drive your car like you stole it then you shouldsell it and buy somethingmore fuel efficient, and maintenance friendly as you are either not thrilled bydriving a car to it's potential or youcan not afford to fix it when it breaks. I can't afford to fix it when it breakseither. I make around 16,000 a year and can barely afford the payments. When I break this car I amS.O.L but at least I will have had fun.

4. Shame on Chevrolet for not buildingthe car to be abused. I don'tlike the cops mucheither when their filling the role of revenue collector on the highwaybut at least they expect durability out of a car.

5. Shame on the piggy's for ever saying a Ford is better than a Chevy. Driving a Ford is like kissing your sister, it makes you feel sick and wierd and it makes God unhappy. Sorry folks but my great grandfather drove a chevy and so has every man after him. I have it in my blood.

6. If you want to complain about transmissions all you have to do is go talk to a Dodge owner. I like the dodges but frankley it might as well be a matter of fact and not just my opinion that every Dodge transmission ever made was just a hunk of metal doomed to be replaced by another hunk of metal. And if you have had good luck with a Dodge transmission I don't care to hear your story. It was probably an Allison or you probably only drove it to chuch on Sundays. Either way if it ever lasted more than 50k miles your must have had fiarys working on it while you slept.

Now then I feel a lot better. Hope this was in the least entertaining for some of you. For those of you I upset, don't take it personally, it's all in good fun.

 

LMAO, maybe that's what my MIL should've gotten then instead of her POS Grande Marquis. It's an '01 with only 53,000 and too many problems.

Speaking of 6 months, mom bought her new truck in October about a week before I got my MC, she's only put 2750 on it and I've putover 7,000 on mine. She works 3 days a week, 3 miles from home.

BTW, I can't believe they are only running v6's. You would think for a police car they'd want the power of an 8.