I don’t know enough about these Caprice Cruisers to nail down the exact model year, but clearly it’s old enough to have been auctioned off to a private party buyer. The new owner has made a pair of modifications, and I approve of both-
The Cadillac wheels add a bit of bling to an otherwise plain wrapper, and the (Holden) door graphic is a nice wink to fellow enthusiasts familiar with the car’s genesis.
I’d love to have one of these. Talk about the last of a dying breed. A full sized V8 rear wheel drive sedan that isn’t a luxury or sports sedan. I have nothing against either of those two types of cars but I have a soft spot for the classic American family sedan. Even if this one is really an Australian car!
Before reading the post, I thought wow, those wheels look great for an ex police car. I’d have left the doors black and if there were a way to move the door handles to chrome, it would look perfect to me. Not a bad looking car at all in civilian dress.
The doors probably never were black, and I’d assume the Holden emblem decals were a lot cheaper than painting them black (of all colors!) to OEM standards to match the rest of the car.
To improve resale values the new Ford police cars have white wrap on the black doors, if the black and white scheme is selected. In the past they would paint the doors white.
IIRC, a commenter has one of these. There was a Car and Driver comparison between this and a Charger SRT 392. As one might imagine, the Mopar came off as a latter-day musclecar, while the cheaper Caprice was more of a refined daily-driver.
https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/comparison-test/a15113114/2014-chevrolet-ss-vs-2013-dodge-charger-srt8-392-comparison-test/
The captive import Chevrolet SS (née Holden VF/VFII Commodore SS-V Redline) is not the same car as the WM/WN Caprice PPV 9C1/9C3. Same platform (Zeta), but the Caprice is 4″ longer and is powered by the L77 6.0l engine as opposed to the LS3 6.2l engine used in the SS. The Pontiac G8 was based on the earlier VE Commodore on the same Zeta platform.
Caprice PPVs can be purchased on the cheap, but as noted elsewhere, tend to be ‘ridden hard and put up wet,’ and also require a significant amount of work to update the cabin to be more DD-friendly.
These aren’t difficult to find for sale, and the idea of buying one held enough appeal for me to look into it. Endemic expensive engine failures ended that dream, and “Oh, but you can rebuild it and then disable the cylinder deactivation [I think it was] to make the failure less likely” confirmed the no-thanks; who the hell needs even lower fuel economy? Sigh. I liked the idea of an Australian car.
Yeah when they came through my state’s auction a more than acceptable number of them came through with “bad engine” announcements. Wrecked ones sell for nearly as much as ones in good condition indicating that the power train was the reason people were buying them. Not sure if people were buying them for replacing or swapping.
Weird. The engine was made in America. Does it cause trouble in other applications?
To Daniel, you could fit the 3.6 High Feature V6. All the govt ones here got that engine anyway, for ferrying round our Dear Leaders. (Not under arrest you understand – though doubtless some should be – but because the Caprice was a luxury limo here).
Police use is unique with a lot of idle time in some cases. These and many other recent police vehicles have hour meters that report both total hours and idle hours. It is not uncommon to see State Patrol units coming through auction that have idle hrs that are more than 50% of the total hrs. City force vehicles can reach 75% or higher. Idle hrs only include the time that the engine is running with the transmission in park.
That means that while the car may have traveled only 120k its engine has as many hours as a regular vehicle that has gone 200K, 300k or more.
Here is a good example. https://www.govdeals.com/index.cfm?fa=Main.Item&itemid=13519&acctid=8445
118k miles
6685 total hrs
4338 idle hrs
65% of the time it was idling in park.
It did manage to average 50mph when in gear, which does beat the 33mph average that Ford considers an hour of idle time to be the equivalent of for scheduling oil change intervals.
When GM first started offering OHC V-6 engines they kept the old pushrod V-6 in police applications because the OHC unit couldn’t meet the idle durability requirement.
So yes police applications can challenge engine durability.
Fascinating, thanks for that. Such detail would never turn up at an Aussie auction, as our consumer protection laws trail the US quite a bit (eg: no lemon law).
Avoiding the temptation to make donut jokes about that 65% number, the life of the motor is a tough one, idling or (likely) being given a brief and intense workout. Interestingly, the same engine was used in legions of Chev SS cop cars here (Commodore SS) without trouble, but crucially, they never do 120K. I believe the upper limit would be 60k miles, probably due to bigger budgets: all police here are state-based with no equivalent of local/county policing.
Well the info does vary a lot.
My state has found that the more info and pictures they provide the better price they get and the fewer questions they get. With agencies that have their vehicles maintained by the DES mechanics they provide full maintenance history. I purchased my pickup and my wife’s former Escape Hybrid and C-Max from my state and they had full histories. You can’t drive them on the road, but they are available for viewing Tue-Sat and you can start them pull them forward and back and they do list the observations of their test drive.
Other agencies will put a couple of pictures, severely limit viewing and won’t answer questions and they wonder why they get less for their vehicles.
Nice find you have here I wonder if they went to a salvage yard for those wheels? I don’t know about Portland, but Washington County Oregon still has a few of these since not all of them have been wrecked.
I remember I was so stoked last decade when these debuted, I wanted one so bad.
Perhaps it depends on the state -because I have seen a fair number on my road trips through the south and northeast US – but these just never caught on… at all. There are almost none in Michigan which is home base for police cars and domestic nameplates especially. I was really surprised when these didn’t replace the Crown Vic en masse back in 2012 because police LOVED the old Caprice in the 1990s.
I don’t know their total sales figures but they must be vastly lower than the Taurus (which are common in cities) and WAY lower than the Chargers, which are everywhere in most states.
Perhaps they were more expensive? Less proven? Social norms of most departments buying the Ford and Dodge, which made these too quirky for traditionally conservative PDs? I don’t know what would entice a fleet buyer to purchase one over the other two main sedans besides the retro nameplate, but very few did it seems.
I read somewhere that one of the issues was that because they had to be imported from Australia there were shipping and other logistical delays. Early on there was talk of local US production but I guess those plans fell through. The New Jersey State Police and Maryland State Police used (uses) them.
The biggest limitation was buy-American rules in many counties, if not States. They were, after all, a full import.
Illinois State Police are still using these. My understanding is that they ended up being costly to maintain and that parts availability was often an issue.
Very simple why they didn’t catch on: Cost, initial as well as operating costs. The 6.2 V8 was a gas hog, and the rest of the car was quite expensive, on par with a Chevy SS, which retailed at over $45k, and that’s before the police equipment. Our local departments only had a few, just enough I assume to realize the Impala was quite adequate. If rear drive and a V8 was “needed”, there was always the Crown Vic, or after its demise, the Charger. Both which had significantly lower acquisition and operating costs. In addition, for the cost of a Caprice PPV, a Tahoe could be had; same cost but much more versatile and durable.
The V8 would be especially thirsty as these cars are overweight. The platform was originally meant to be a world RWD base, with more exotic metals bringing the total weight down. But late in the day, it became pretty much Oz-only, and mass-market Oz at that, meaning the cost had to come down, the structure cheaper, thus the weight up. The result is that they are all super-solid units, even with many miles onboard, but a good 20% too heavy.
As to cost, Holden struck a snag that was historically pretty impossible to foresee. Australia was barely touched by the ’08 GFC (lotta reasons), then it had a further mining boom, meaning that for much of the time trying to sell the PPV to America, the Aussie dollar was close to parity, in fact being MORE valuable than the USD for a while. With posher equipment (leather, blah), these things sold here for $60-$70K AUD, so even at $45K USD (including LHD build and shipping costs) they made no money on them. Indeed, it seems impossible that they were anything other than a loss-maker.
And as for slow-train parts, yeah, well, we’re not called Down Under for nothing!
The Caprice PPV uses the L77 6.0l engine (in the USA), not the 6.2l LS3. As already noted, they are still in very visible use as State Patrol pursuit cars here in Illinois.
I wonder if fear of expensive or less-available parts hampered Caprice PPV sales – the same things that made me wary of buying a GTO or Catera. A Taurus, Crown Vic, Charger, or Impala police cruiser shares most of its parts with a gazillion American civilian cars, but many basic mechanical items or trim pieces from these “captive imports” did not interchange with those from American-sourced GM products.
I’ve seen many of these, as well as SS’s, G8s and GTOs, rebadged (or perhaps I should say re-rebadged) as Holdens around these parts.
Were Holden-badged cars ever sold in the US? It seems Holden managed to find a pocket of enthusiasts here even without directly marketing their wares, rather like how JDM cars like the Nissan Skyline GTR were well-known here even before we could buy one. It’s too bad homegrown Holdens aren’t around anymore to take advantage of their newfound popularity.
Not sure that I’ve ever seen one on duty in California. Never saw many Tauri either. Crown Vic, Charger, Explorer seem to be the trinity here. The Charger seems to be making a comeback with the Highway Patrol after a few years of Explorer exclusivity.
Taurii are still used around here in Los Angeles… they are mostly unmarked detective cars although a handful are in full livery. I have seen the Caprice used as well in similar non-law enforcement roles, both all wearing the standard ‘CA EXEMPT’ plates.
Man I’d love to have one of these retired cruisers! I know IL State Police ran many of these Caprices. Somewhat of a modern-day Bluesmobile. I presume an engine swap in one is pretty straightforward if need be.
Not sure I like the mods on this one but to each their own. I have no idea what the Holden griffth looks like so I’m sure everyone like me thinks this just looks like a municipality crest. Which is pretty funny given its previous use.
If I had to have a full-size RWD American sedan, this would be the one.
I just can’t justify why I’d own one. It would inevitably take the place of my ’57 Chevy (which will be built to behave like a far newer car) and that is SO not happening.
Also, the current-gen 3.6 Impala does so many things well and is available with so many more toys…I NEVER thought I’d see the day when I might prefer a FWD but GM finally hit a home run with the 2014-present, being discontinued model.
Nice problem for the General to have, too bad few people care.
Unless you’re prepared to do a very substantial amount of work to update the cabin (which will be very basic and configured for police radios, etc.), you’d be much happier with a G8 or SS. OTOH, a blown LS3 swap and additional lightening and suspension work could turn a used PPV into a very potent sleeper.