A little while ago, Donut Media released a video series wherein they bought a $500 Honda Civic with more miles on the clock than a spaceship practically, ripped out all its internals, and spent tens of thousands putting top-of-the-line performance drivetrain and interior hardware inside it. Well, we think we’ve just found another candidate for this kind of restoration. If there were ever a car fit for that kind of treatment, it’s this 1995 Ford Crown Victoria sedan with an astounding 360,000 miles (579,363.8 km) on the odometer.
This particular car comes to us today via the Shooting Cars YouTube channel run by the quirky, high-energy car enthusiast Zack Pradel. Zack’s channel focuses primarily on older cars you no doubt completely forgot even existed alongside the obligatory modern riff-raff. Guests in front of his camera include a 1966 Dodge Monaco, a mid-80s Renault Encore economy car, and even an R31-series Nissan Skyline. But it’s safe to say very few of the older hunks of iron on Zack’s channel bear quite as many road scars as this Crown Vic.
Three hundred sixty thousand miles isn’t far off from the distance from the Earth to the Moon and back. As such, a car with very nearly as many miles as Apollo 13’s lunar lander is going to have some rust just about everywhere. Granted, this old Vic could probably withstand re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere better then the LEM could. But seeing deep pits of rust slowly consume each of this Crown Vic’s quarter panels is almost painful to watch. That’s doubly so because, believe it or not, the current owner of this car was taken home from the gosh-darn hospital as a newborn in the back seat of this car. Only when the car was passed down to him and later sold to a friend did they park outside in the nasty Illinois weather.
Yeah, it was pretty much game over for this Crown Vic’s bodywork from that point on. But as Zack eagerly points out, the rest of this car might as well be in perfect working order. That includes that ever-present 4.6-liter, single-overhead cam Ford modular V8 and its four-speed automatic transmission. Even after all this time, Ford’s arguable most reliable engine in its history fails to skip a beat on hard highway pulls and everyday in-town traffic like we’re still in the Clinton administration. Seriously, how many cars from the mid-90s with this many miles can claim to be in half as good of shape? Apart from a few Nissans, Hondas, and Toyotas, not much.
Ironically, it’s almost a breath of fresh air watching a car that so valiantly fought Midwest winters for almost 30 years get the same review treatment as a brand-new car. It’s another reason we love showcasing smaller channels like Zack’s mixed in with the Stradman and Mr Beasts of the world.