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Originally Posted by DGthe3
Uhh ... I only made 1 of those posts
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Yeah, sorry 'bout that. I fixed the quotes to reflect the op correctly.
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Originally Posted by DGthe3
Anyway, police gear adds a LOT of weight. I've heard that the Crown Vic gets something like 400 lbs worth of stuff added in the conversion to police duty, the electronics are one of the biggest culprits. The SHO comes in at a little under 4400 lbs to start with.
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The weight difference overall between the the Interceptor and the Caprice should be noticeably less than the weight difference between a Taurus SHO and a Pontiac G8 since the SHO comes with a lot more stuff standard than did the G8 GT, and the Caprice is obviously larger than the G8 was. Put more simply, Interceptor has more to gain, in terms of weight loss, by shedding standard equipment and there is a size increase from G8 GT to Caprice that doesn't exist for the Ford. Typically the difference in curb weight between a SHO and a G8 GT is about 400lb, if the Interceptor loses 100lb and the Caprice gains 100lb due to the increase in size we could end up with two cars that are 200lb apart, which isn't much of a difference and this is only with a 100lb swing for each car.
Is that going to happen? We obviously don't know yet, but ultimately that is really the point I am trying to make. Yes, I expect the Interceptor to be a little heavier than the Caprice, but there is very good reason to believe that the difference in weight may not be nearly as much as some of the folks on here seem to think it will.
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Originally Posted by DGthe3
Profitability, Crown Vics cost next to nothing for Ford to build. The last update they had was 1998 and that was a refresh not a redesign. Fundamentally they haven't changed since they were introduced in 1992. All the engineering costs have been paid for years ago. Its no contest compared to the SHO about which one would have the better margins. I would guess that the main reason they're discontinuing the Crown Vic is because the equipment at the factory is probably at the end of its life.
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Actually, there is definitely a contest in terms of margin. The continuing production of the Crown Vic PI would require that the entire St. Thomas facility remain open, switching the Interceptor to the Taurus platform allows Ford to shutter an entire plant and simply produce more of a newer product they were going to build at the Chicago plant anyway in it's place.
Better utilization of the one facility and the ability to shelve another? The drop in overhead by making this switch is obviously huge. granted, if Ford had something else to build in St. Thomas it might be a workable proposition, but as it is Ford is probably going to make more money on this new Interceptor than they did on the outgoing model even if sales drop by half.