Panther Cars are Cool pt 4- Inspection

What’s the first thing you do after buying a car? After doing a burnout of course, which I didn’t get a picture of, sorry. Well, if you’re like me, you crawl all over it checking it out. Fortunately, we have a lift at our shop, and I quickly had the car in the air checking out all the cool cop-car stuff. Here are some of the highlights.

Where the civilian Panther platform cars have steel control arms, the police cars got these all-business aluminum arms.  Moving back, you can see the police-only aluminum driveshaft that has a larger diameter than the civilian cars.

Check out the gas-tank shield. I don’t know if this is from the factory or not (I’m still looking into that), but Ford has received criticism about the placement of the gas tank between the trunk and the rear axle. In very hard rear impacts, the gas tanks have ruptured. Some evidence has indicated that sharp objects in the trunk were responsible for this, and Ford fleet literature strongly encourages equipping the cruisers with a trunk storage bin instead of storing equipment unsecured in the trunk. But look at how everything between the gas tank and rear axle is shielded- the sway bar mounts, the spring perches, even the tailpipes. And that yellow thing that says FirePanel, is make of Kevlar, I’m guessing- it feels like a semi-rigid piece of nylon. Ford advertises that the police cars are designed to withstand a 75 mph hit to the rear. Hope I’m never in a situation like that.  

I didn’t really inspect the car very well before the auction began, it was kind of an impulse buy, but I was happy to see that there is no evidence of any collisions, body repairs, or frame damage. Nothing leaks, either: engine, trans, and rearend are all dry.

Next up: the paint job. Stay tuned.