In Part 1, there was a Buick Cascada that was likely more rare than this Maserati. As luck and fortune would have it, a Chevrolet was able to provide some stiff competition for the Buick in the “you never see one” department.
With this Caprice PPV being built in Australia, it’s even further from its place of birth than the Maserati. Sales of the PPV topped out in 2013 at 3,899 units, which is a smidgeon over half of the Buick Cascada’s 2016 sales volume of 7,153. With these rebadged Holden’s going primarily to police service, the survival rate will be minuscule in another five years.
Since the Buick has Kansas plates, it was already quite a distance from its regular stomping grounds. One could even consider him as tailing the Maserati.
Another great catch. Strangely enough, I have seen a few of these here in Chicago in the Loop district. They’re also painted a charcoal color, are very stealthy looking, and probably look like Impalas to everyone else walking to work.
Wow, if ever there was a car with pre-introduction hoopla and actual sales being more different, I can’t remember it. For a time, everything I read seemed to shout that Chevy was making a big play for the police market again. And then crickets. I am not sure I have even seen one of these. Excellent spotting!
The Edsel? But that was before either of us were born I guess
Jim, I’m wanting to say the Indiana State Police had a few of these. Seems it may have been around Terre Haute.
The Illinois State Patrol uses the PPV on the interstates a good bit – there’s one that hangs out on the West side of Peoria that I often see doing business. Also see a lot of Chargers, not so many Explorers.
On a return trip from Georgia last Autumn, we saw six PPVs in a two-mile stretch, all handing out fast driving awards.
The Maryland State Police bought the PPV in 2014-15, then back to Ford with the Taurus Interceptor and now the Explorer Interceptor. LE sources say the PPV was generally fine, but cops like the roomy Explorer as it has room for all the on board computers, tactical gear, etc. that modern LE needs. Here in the east high speed pursuits are frowned upon for safety reasons, which lessens the need for a pure pursuit vehicle, hence the popularity of the Explorer. And, perhaps most importantly, fleet managers are concerned about ease and cost of repairs, an edge given to the domestically produced Fords. The PPV was fine for what it was, but it missed the changing needs of the cop car market, which contributed more than anything else to its demise.
Jason, minor correction needed:
“Since the Buick has Kansas plates” – I think you meant to say, “Since the Chevy has Kansas plates” or even, Since the “Holden” has Kansas plates.
And CPJ jumped in before I could. We see these Caprices all the time here in Maryland. Not only does the MSP have them, so do the “Toll Cops” – better known as the “Maryland Transportation Authority Police”, the force formerly known as the “Maryland Toll Facilities Police”.
And the “Toll Cops” are not loyal to the brand at all. They have these Holden Chevies, some Dodge Chargers, then Ford Taurus Style Police Interceptors, and of course, the classic Panther is also still in use here.
Equal Opportunity Fleet Purchasing at its finest. ;o)
Oh, and I feel bad pointing out a correction, when my own grammar is messed up too… Sadly, the editor function errored out on me while using my work computer. I’m testing this as a “sent from my iPad” mode…. let’s see if it fails again.
In that next to last paragraph it should read:
“And the Toll Cops are not loyal to a brand at all. They have these Holden Chevies, as well as some Dodge Chargers, and the Ford Taurus Style Police Interceptors, and of course, the classic Panther is also still in use here.”
Again, as I have stated before here, thankfully, the Grammar Police don’t patrol this site. Now over at SPACE.com? – yeah, you need a radar detector when you comment over there. ?
Follow Up: The 15 minute comment editor worked this time, so it must’ve been a glitch on my end… most likely our web filter here doing something nefarious, although I don’t normally have a problem here at CC.
The comment editor thingy is really playing up, more than usual.
I think “Buy American” laws in place in many jurisdictions prevented the consideration of an Australian-built Caprice, no matter how well-suited for the job it might have been.
That’s just what happened, though how Holden could make excitable predictions and seemingly not know about such restrictions is beyond me.
Keep in mind these are captive imports, so I would presume Chevrolet here in the States either A) dropped the ball, or B) never really intended to sell many in the first place (consistent with how the SS played out).
I can’t speak for “local” governments but the federal government had (still has?) a buy American policy when it comes to vehicles. However, the rules were often stretched a bit, as the Naval Air Station I was based at had several Mitsubishi built but Dodge badged mini trucks.
When these Australian built Chevys hit a dealership here in Jacksonville, one of the dealerships advertised them for sale to the general public. The price was just under $40,000 in 2013.
I can’t imagine that it was possible to discount that price significantly because of the freight, and small market niche these occupied.
A very small town outside of Jacksonville has one of these that the police chief drives. I would imagine that at least half these PPVs never saw a high speed chase.
Wasn’t the Caprice PPV pricing somewhat higher than what police agencies were willing to pay? Importing from the other side of earth isn’t cheap.
My local burb has 2-3 of them, and a few IL State troopers, but overall didn’t sell well. Aren’t parts expensive, again, coming from far away?
Also, did they not come with column shifter? That’s a deal breaker for many agencies.
They had a dinky little floor shifter close to the drivers right knee, then later a column job. In Aus, these were luxury vehicles selling for an amazing $60kAUD+, at a time of near-enough parity to USD, where the plods could get them for about $30kUSD, a loss maker I’m sure. Parts? Drivetrain had already had an ocean voyage from the US(!), and for panels, etc, there’s lots of cheap shipping between both countries. It was the buy American rules that ultimately failed it.
My local police department bought a bunch of Caprice police cruisers a few years ago. My favorite one in their fleet is one of the unmarked detective’s cars, which is painted in a dark gray-green — very nice car and looks mighty similar to the example in your photos here.
Since I see them a lot, I hadn’t realized quite how rare they were nationwide.
That wasn’t the only grey Holden you saw that weekend, was it? (c:
This was an appetizer for the main, meaty course!
Quite a few folk on this site love the old Panther cars, and I’ll admit they have real appeal as the quintessential rear-drive slidey cop car from any US movie or tv show. I think it’s not generally understood that the Caprice is the same size of car, only an inch or so skinnier and about 4-5 inches shorter than the Crown Vic, but with a wheelbase 4 inches longer. In another context, it is exactly the dimensions of a new LWB Mercedes S-class. As our grey Holden-driving Mr Stembridge here will confirm, these are damn fine-handling and steering machines, all models having the engine mounted mostly behind the axle line, 50/50 weight distribution, front-mount steering rack (apparently the best place for feel and accuracy) and fairly sophisticated rear axle. Add to that a familiar and hottish Corvette V8 and the simpler servicing benefits of RWD, and it’s very much a big tough Panther but updated to drive like a decent BMW. So much so that when they shut Holden here, they should have shipped the long-amortised tooling Stateside for low vol production; even if Chev then got 50% of the PPV market, there’d surely be good money from the long-amortised production. The somewhat over-built design also means safety is up to scratch for some time to come. Apparently, the coppers really like them, the long wheelbase giving a really comfortable workplace.
Amusingly enough, if you saw a Caprice in Aus, it was likely to be any politician including the Prime Minister, as it was decked-out as a luxury barge here, selling only to chauffer fleets in the end. The demographic that had once bought big LWB Aussie cars had departed this earth and their widows gone to the Gold Coast (think Florida).
Oh, one other mild amusement from downunder; if you do see the PM in a Caprice, he sits up front, (just as we all do in taxis here). Everyone would think he was “up himself” if he didn’t. Quite a funny use of a LWB car with an acreage of rear seat, really..
I now have the image of one of our Presidents yelling “Shotgun!” and racing the Secret Service to the front seat stuck in my head.
Haha! Although, I would’ve thought that the anyone including the Prez yelling out “shotgun” as they approached the car might not end well….
“So much so that when they shut Holden here, they should have shipped the long-amortised tooling Stateside for low vol production; even if Chev then got 50% of the PPV market, there’d surely be good money from the long-amortised production.” The Caprice never made a serious dent in the police car sales race. Its best year they only moved 3800 units and had dropped to barely over 1000 units in 2016. The Ford Interceptor Sedan has managed to move 10k +/- units in most years. The Interceptor Utility on the other hand started out selling twice as often as the Sedan and only increased from there accounting for over 30k units last year.
So while there has certainly been a shift to a preference of utility vehicles the Caprice was never really in the running with a small share of the police car market. Part of it was due no doubt to the lack of a SSV version as the reality is that most police depts don’t give a rats ass about pursuit ratings, however the fact is that the Tahoe PPV or SSV actually had a lower cost per mile than either the Caprice PPV or Charger Pursuit.
So no it would not have made sense to ship the tooling anywhere to produce even the 300 cars per month they averaged at their peak.
You’re quite right. Even Ford was surprised by the flop of it’s sedan. Apparently, SUV’s were just 12% of the market in just 2012 – and 50% in 2017, a whopping turnaround which is still growing. My thought was based on the time when the Crown Vic got 75% of that market, which was really not too long ago, up until about the time the Holden would have been under development for US use. My thinking was based on getting, say, 50% of THAT number, about 30K+ cars, still a low number for the US industry, but highly profitable. And US assembly would negate the buy-American stuff where it was relevant. Turns out Holden weren’t so silly in thinking that a decent slice (say 15-20K cars) would make money here. They just couldn’t have forseen the super-quick collapse of the niche. I should point out that adding 20K cars to the numbers exported to China and Middle east plus far too many for our over-governed country locally(!) would’ve made the LWB platform profitable here. The model was planned when Aus was selling 60K+ a year to the Middle east, but then Aus was NOT hit by the GFC in 2008, so our dollar soared for years, making exports unsellably pricey, & the GFC was completely unforseeable. Man, where’s their luck?
Arghh, I know why I’m carrying on with all this rubbish – the loss of a really good car & nostalgia for a now-dead industry. Also, some foolish jingoism. Just when this country had produced a world-class vehicle, a car that in particular took all the traditional American car virtues of size and ruggedness but combined the other virtues of excellent seats, steering, ride and handling that had long been so good on Aus cars, and was about to sell it right into the country that invented the big car, the world shifted forever.
Police agencies are tracking the general market, and wanted more room of an SUV. Some asked “what will Cops drive?” when Crown Vic was dropped, and this is the answer.
“… they should have shipped the long-amortized tooling Stateside for low vol production;…”
Also, GM doesn’t have the $$$ to dedicate a whole plant to a unique low volume platform. And, the market for big cars has dried up. They aren’t in business to build “future used cars” for enthusiasts
That happened to me.
One day some years ago I was driving along on the freeway and had this feeling I was being watched. I looked out the window and was taken aback to see the PM (John Howard 1996-2007) grinning at me from the front passenger seat of a Caprice a few metres away in the adjacent lane.
In about ’99, certainly pre-Sept 2001 anyway, I was walking along William St in Melbourne, head down bum up heading home, 5pm heavy traffic at standstill, when I glanced to my left and saw the plate “C*1”. Sure enough, there grinning from just above the dash in the passenger seat of the Caprice, was Howard. Looked like one of those noddy dashtop ornaments really.
Literally could’ve reached out and knocked on his window, and in those times, he’d have probably opened it a bit to hear whatever abuse I could think of on the spot. (No no, I just grinned back and swore internally).
A shame they have had a “high security” BMW 7-series for a few years now. Didn’t even consider a local alternative because they would have cost more, never mind having a bit of national pride.
As our grey Holden-driving Mr Stembridge here will confirm, these are damn fine-handling and steering machines, all models having the engine mounted mostly behind the axle line, 50/50 weight distribution, front-mount steering rack (apparently the best place for feel and accuracy) and fairly sophisticated rear axle. Add to that a familiar and hottish Corvette V8 and the simpler servicing benefits of RWD, and it’s very much a big tough Panther but updated to drive like a decent BMW.
I do hereby confirm. I love driving this car, and now I’m more familiar with it, I’m starting to nudge deeper into its capabilities, and my grin just keeps getting bigger.
My understanding is that Holden benchmarked the E39 BMW M5 when designing the VF, and the SS-V Redline/Chev SS holds its own quite well against same (video link).
It seems as though there just weren’t many repeat buyers of the Caprice PPV. If you look at the sales numbers they managed to move 3700-3900 of them 2012-2014 but for 2015 their sales dropped in half followed by another drop to barely over 1000 units in 2016. Now some of that could be that by that time they knew it was going to be discontinued and that caused some apprehension. However the 2012 and 2013 units coming off service locally have a very high rate of announcements. Here are a few gems from recent units to cross the auction block.
REAR LUG-NUTS SEEM TO LOOSEN ON THEIR OWN. A/C INTERMITTENT.
Steering Shimmy @ 60-65 mph (most noticeable) mid shift has strange bog down sitting at idle passenger front tire slow leak
Engine light on exhaust leak.// Rock chip windshield has engine noise// RIGHT HEADLIGHT OUT
Car radio has no volume. 40,000 miles on new engine.
ENGINE NEEDS LIFTERS ENGINE HAS MISFIRE AT IDLE. DRIVERS SEAT WORN.
Major Exhaust Leak-engine mounts Large hole on seat from belt/gear
These are all 12 and 13 models with around 110-120k on them.
You just don’t see that rate of serious announcements on other retired police units, unless it was a training academy car that that they thrash very hard.
That’s actually very intriguing, and I was about to add that the reason is that such vehicles are used hard, till your last line (“you don’t see that rate..”). I commented to Ed Stembridge when he bought his Holden that he might not find Honda levels of quality over time, because the brutal reality is that local designs here were never quite up to the Japanese in quality. That said, it’s intriguing because the US-made cars we’ve had here have been universally below even the local standard, sometimes (Chrysler) far below.
As far as police vehicles go these have led relatively easy lives as they are ex state patrol units. Our state patrol has a 1 man 1 car standard and in fact the license plate number is the officer’s badge number. Being assigned to a particular individual usually means that the car is better taken care of as they can’t claim that dent, engine noise, ect was there when they started their shift. Because they are state patrol units they also spend much of their time on the freeway.
The really sad thing is that the state patrol had a bunch of 2008 Escape XLT V6 4x4s for officer use and they don’t come through with announcements despite the fact it is an off the shelf CUV, not even a Special Service Vehicle, let alone responder or interceptor rated, and they often keep them to 150k miles too.
I should add that all of this if from vehicles listed on govdeals.com. I’ve found that if you do an advanced search by make and model it often misses vehicles so search using something like caprice, crown victoria, or police in the keyword field.
For me Caprice PPV sightings are a regular thing as Parma, OH, just a couple miles up the road, had a small fleet of them. Seeing as Parma has a GM stamping plant it stands to reason 🙂 .
I’m not sure I’ve ever seen one in California, not any local PD and certainly not Highway Patrol. I think there are still more Panthers running around in this state than all GM cop cars combined, though the National Parks do seem to be big on Tahoes and Suburbans. And maybe it’s my imagination, but I feel there are some mor new CHP Chargers out on the roads lately. Is the PPV the same size as the SS? Those are also pretty rare around here and when I see one it always looks small, almost Malibu-sized.
The SS is much bigger than it seems, and the PPV enormous by world standards, LWB Mercedes S-class size.
The PPV is on the same platform, with a 4″ (IIRC) wheelbase stretch. It’s considered a full size car (here, anyway). Doesn’t look it, to my eye. I parked near a P71 this morning at work, and my car looked mid-size in comparison.
The Caprice PPV was not sold in Canada because as an Australian car it was outside import regulations and I suspect something also in relation to the Auto Pact. GM Canada was most disappointed when they found this out while trying to promote the Caprice as a candidate for the Edmonton City Police fleet. A prototype sat in the back lot of a downtown Chevrolet – Cadillac dealer for the longest time until the issue blew over and the Caprice was shipped back to GM in the US.
A suburb of Buffalo, Tonawanda , NY had a fleet of PPV’s, but they were replaced last year with Ford Explorers. Buffalo started replacing all of their Crown Vics with Chevy Tahoes…rear wheel drive…a mistake in Buffalo. Their latest purchase id for AWD Chargers
The thing is that 4wd has been an option on the Tahoe PPV for a couple of years and it has always been available on the Tahoe SSV. Fact is no city force has a real need for a PPV level Chevy, Interceptor level Ford, or Pursuit level Dodge. There just isn’t a need for their high top speeds in a city’s jurisdiction, and certainly not running for long periods of time near the upper range of its abilities.