A Great Read: The Crown Vic Lounge Lizard

"Thunderface" (thunderface)
01/05/2015 at 13:55 • Filed to: Ford crown victoria, project car, custom, Story time

This is the story of a crazy custom Crown Victoria that might very well have been the inspiration for the Mercury Marauder. Thank you Car and Driver.

If I've said it once, I've said it… well, maybe I have only said it once: Anything weighing two tons and casting a 17.7-foot shadow ought to be a national monument. Or, at the very least, federal law ought to prohibit it from being named after a prudish British matriarch who married her cousin and invented five orders of knighthood plus the phrase "We are not amused."

Of course, "We are not amused" more or less summarizes our opinion of the Rubens-esque Ford Crown Victoria, a sedan famous as a taxi, as a cop car, and as a mobile condominium in which Uncle Seth can store all four sets of his Callaway Big Berthas.

Still, there's something about the Crown Vic that might amuse. For one thing, it is the last of the affordable full-size, V-8–powered, rear-drive American sedans. And as Chevrolet accidentally demonstrated with its ballsy Impala SS, the market for big brooding, brutish boulevardiers remains, well, rabid . Sure, it's a lounge lizard of a car, an A&W street racer, a hot rod for Thumper's Third Base Saloon (motto: "Last stop before home"). But if Ford wouldn't create a Dearborn version of the Impala SS, we would. Or blow up engines trying.

By John Phillips

Photos by Aaron Kiley

Read the rest on Car and Driver's website:

http://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/ford-c…

DISCUSSION (4)

Rock Bottom > Thunderface
01/05/2015 at 14:06

I remember emotionally reading this over and over when that issue came in the mail. It was beautiful and creative and so... 'Murican. I laughed. I cried. I was inspired.

Then I bought a Saturn. Oh bloody hell...

Thunderface > Rock Bottom
01/05/2015 at 14:08

I'd kill for the paper issue of this

Rock Bottom > Thunderface
01/05/2015 at 14:11

I doubt mine survived. For a while there I was pretty keen on stacking up boxes of old magazines and shooting at them. Kind of a shame, really.

Thunderface > Rock Bottom
01/05/2015 at 14:15

lol