2004 Ford Crown Victoria

And then it spent the next like 3 months at the dealership. It turns out the dealer improperly prepped it before Tony took delivery, so the paint was messed up on the hood, roof, and trunklid. So Tony took it back under warrantee to have it fixed, and they even provided him a loaner car (which is a story that Scott and Tony can share elsewhere some time).

On the first trip to the dealer (and about 3 weeks worth of time) they painted it black, but with the wrong metal flake in it. I don't know what the factory spec was, but the fleck they mixed in was blue. So back to the dealer it went and then after about another month Tony had it back again. Although I don't know what the state of the paint was at that point.

Other then that, this car didn't see too much action. Tony was very careful with this car and babied it a lot. There are only two instances I can think of where Tony got aggressive with this car.

This first was when he came out to Bedford to show Scott, I had already seen it once before. It was about 10pm on a Wednesday I think, so we decided to take the first new generation fleet ride somewhere. We had this 2004, my '99 Crown Vic, and the '95 Crown Vic that I later bought from Scott. We took a very fast ride down to Route 9 and went to a Dunkin Donuts to have a snack.

The second was in Hudson, Massachusetts. Scott and I were at my parents house, probably doing something car related. Tony was in the area so we connected and got some lunch. Well after lunch (Scott and I were rolling in my '99) we decided to go somewhere, I honestly can't remember where. And wherever it was we were gonna go, it required using the highway. Well as anyone who knows Tony knows, one thing he likes to be is in either the faster car, or out in front (or both). Well at the traffic light to get on the entry ramp I got the jump on him. So we are travelling down this very long entrance ramp to the highway (it's about 2 miles long) and I'm managing to stay ahead of him. I was hoping that if I could get my car up to around 105 mph that his speed limiter would kick in and then the contest would be over (my '99 was an ex state police car so it wasn't equipped with a speed limiter). As the car was crawling toward 100 mph there was a loud pop and the whole car started smoking. I quickly aimed to pull the car over. After coming to a stop, what I discovered was that it wasn't smoke, but coolant rather. And what had happened was that the hose running from the intake to the radiator had popped off and spilled basically all of the coolant all over a hot engine.

But of course was Tony worried about that? No. He was more pissed that some coolant mist had gotten all over his new car's paint job! While Scott and I investigated my car, he was behind us toweling off his car. Since it was just the hose, we limped the car back to Hudson, clamped the hose back on, and refilled the coolant.

Tony had the black SAP for a couple more months, and then decided it would be best to sell it. Fortunately though it is still in the family, as his mother bought it and uses it as her daily driver. At least he still gets to see it when he goes home.

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