Cop Car Archaeology

04/12/2026

Whether you’re working on a classic car or a fleet vehicle, if you see even one of these you know you’re going to have a mess to clean up…

04/08/2026

Excited to finally share a big project we’ve had in the works for quite a while now. Here we have a pair of very unique rides that we were able to save and have been working on restoring to their original in-service condition. These two Crown Victorias may look like old taxi cabs, but they are actually both NYPD undercover taxis. These cars are both P71 police interceptor package cars which were specially painted by the factory for NYPD in Ford’s “Bus Yellow” paint code. What’s even cooler is that these cars are sequential unit numbers!

The blue car was RMP # 7966, and wore taxi medallion number 2W94. It was in service from 2006 to 2015, and was used by MSTF (Manhattan South Task Force). This car was located in private hands in Pennsylvania a couple years ago, and aside from the tired blue paint, it’s in great shape inside and out with just over 62,000 original miles. Under that blue paint you can now see the original yellow and the old taxi decal impressions re-emerging.

The yellow car is a 2008, and was RMP # 7967. This car originally wore taxi medallion 6Y11, but it was later changed to 6Y26. This car was saved directly from the city auction at the end of 2021, and was held in storage for a while after that. It is now here at home where we’ve slowly been working on putting it back together and trying to collect all the proper equipment for a correct restoration. It certainly didn’t look too pretty at auction, which may be why it ended up selling less than two thousand dollars, but when we got it home we were shocked to discover it had less than 26,000 miles on it! Driving this car is probably the closest I’ll get to driving a brand new Crown Vic, and it is a blast!

I have been hard at work over the past few years collecting all the required Motorcraft parts, police equipment, and taxi accessories required to restore these two back to their original in service condition. As with all of our cars, I am striving to make them 100% accurate, with as much real NYPD and NYC Yellow Cab equipment as I can possibly find. I have also discovered some great in service photos and videos of both of these cars over their years of service, which have been a great help in determining how they were equipped in their past lives.

Over the coming days I will put together more detailed individual posts on these cars, and were working on putting together a video of what they look like now, what work we’re doing, and what comes next for these. Stay tuned for that!

04/02/2026

Check out this footage prominently featuring our LAPD car, shop 89518, from NBCLA’s Newschopper4. This was taken on 9/27/2020 and shows the end of a pursuit in 77th Division. In the last 20 seconds of the clip, the camera zooms in on the other motorist, who walks right over to and leans on our car! It can be so hard sometimes to find in service but photos of old cop cars, so it’s wild to me that I was able to find this one the news twice!

For those who aren’t familiar, the 518 on the roof is the car number, and the 12 on the trunk is for 77th Street Division. It was tough to find the backstory on this one but apparently the suspect was ramming other cars with his car while being pursued by 77th Division. They got him with Stop Sticks, but then he bailed and carjacked someone for this black car which we see him totaling here.

03/31/2026

Found another clip I’ve never seen before of an NYPD Crown Victoria undercover taxi cab, this is one wearing medallion 2W97. Apparently taken at least ten years ago. This Ford was actually a P71 (police package), not a long wheelbase taxi package car. I believe this one was a 2008 but not totally sure.

Video credit: wahab75

03/30/2026

Scanned in a few more photo prints that I got off eBay a couple years ago. Unfortunately they didn’t say who took them of when. The photos show a 1990 Caprice from the 32 Precinct, a Highway 3 Hazmat 1990 Caprice and a 1992 Caprice from MSTF.

03/27/2026

Found this print of an RMP photo on eBay a couple weeks ago and thought it was a cool add to the collection. RMP # 4433 looks to be a 1993 Chevy Caprice assigned to OCD, which stands for Office of the Chief of Department. This car was probably brand new at the time it was taken. Unfortunately I didn’t see any info on who took this, when they took it or where.

Behind it looks to be maybe a Honda Prelude? And then behind that we can see a “box” style Chevy Caprice with the “all-light” McDermott. This was a McDermott riser lightbar specially made for ESU, which had flasher cans only on the top of each bar. The other lights were replaced with a total of ten of the large spotlights, five on each arm. These put out an insane amount of light and were used when searching for people, looking for pieces of evidence on the ground, lighting up crash scenes, etc.

03/25/2026

Check out this new NYPD recruitment ad featuring some of the historic fleet. Love to see them featuring some history, but where’s the Crown Vic??

03/23/2026

In the days before the current fad of boring ghost graphics on everything, we had crazy traffic units like this. I want to go back.

Photo credit: Old Tappan (NJ) PD Facebook

03/23/2026

While doing more digging into the Historic Films archive, I came across some good shots of a more rarely seen RMP, a “box” style Chevy Caprice wagon set up for the Highway Patrol. This wagon, RMP 5119, belonged to Highway 2 and sported a more uncommon setup than most wagons, being equipped with the McDermott riser lightbar and the larger Highway Patrol push bumpers. Those big bumpers were just thick steel brackets with rubber loading dock bumpers on them. At the very beginning, and then about halfway through, you can also briefly spot what would have been a brand new (at the time) 1991 “bubble” Caprice, also set up for Highway. That car looks to be sporting the single stripe decal package, which would end sometime during the rollout of the 1991s.

The NYPD used station wagons for decades, but it seems they only purchased as little as maybe a few dozen per year. The Chevy Caprice was the go-to wagon through the 80s and 90s, except for one order of 1988 Ford Crown Victoria LTD wagons, of which there apparently were only ten. The majority of station wagons were normally used by CSU or the Bomb Squad to haul their additional equipment. As far as I know, the Highway Patrol wagons were used mostly for truck enforcement and/or accident investigation. Over the years I’ve seen many photos and videos of the regular wagons, but not many of these Highway equipped cars. If any Highway guys have further information on or photos of these wagons, please share in the comments!

03/13/2026

Finally had a couple hours free yesterday to open some mail that’s been sitting aside over the past few chaotic months. One of the boxes I was most excited for was this nearly complete setup stripped from a a wrecked unmarked LAPD Crown Vic. The original owner apparently found it in a junk yard and stripped nearly the entire equipment setup, which he was kind enough to ship across the country for me at the end of last year. Unfortunately it was all in one giant, obscenely heavy box, so it looks like it got dropped more the once. The corner lights are smashed beyond repair, but luckily those odd Federal Signal hideaways appear to be intact.

Hopefully I’ll have time this week to work on testing everything. The only items that appear to be missing are the SmartSiren keypad and the tail light hideaways.

01/05/2026

08/09/2025

After so many years of collecting, some things just fall through the cracks if you don’t use them right away. I got my hands on these four brand new clear outer domes for the Whalen Delta light bar years ago, and they ended up in a box in storage all that time. To be honest, I had completely forgotten that I had these, so they were a pleasant surprise when I was cleaning out this week. I’ll have to find a home for at least one of these sets on one of my Delta bars soon.