I have a confession. I’ve been a Classic American photographer since 2005, and in those 17 years have shot, sat in and ridden in literally hundreds of American cars. I’ve been to America many times, driven Route 66 and even got married in LA. But I’ve never owned an American car − until now. Now, you might wonder what caught the eye of someone whose job it is to stare at classic cars all day and across the decades of fenders, fins, chrome, fuselage body and malaise-era excess. There have been many temptations, but the model which summed up America in one car for me was the Crown Vic, specifically the 1998-2011 ‘whale’. A car so ever present, it’s almost part of the background. A car which movie makers just have to drive past the camera to tell the audience “we’re in the US”.
With every trip to the US, my minor obsession grew. The first time I went to America, I rode in a Crown Vic Yellow cab shortly after 9/11, in a deserted New York. My hotel’s Lincoln Town Car − the posh Crown Vic − was being used for airport runs. On later trips, I found myself grabbing photos of cop cars and taxis, which were Vics. At taxi ranks, I’d let other passengers go first so I could take a ride in a Crown Vic. In Santa Fe, I rode in a 400,000-mile taxi which was an ex-police car, but was still going strong.
And that’s what I decided I wanted: an ex-police car. They might not have the eye-catching chrome of a classic, or the luxury of a Cadillac, but they do have an unmistakable charm and undeniable toughness; putting it bluntly, a truck chassis with a car body and a muscle car engine. So, while I could have had a well-equipped Panther platform car like a Mercury Marauder or a comfy civilian Crown Vic or Lincoln which would have been
