| This car was assigned to me in May of
1974 and I drove it until it was taken out of service in late 1977. On day one, I fell in love with the performance of the 440 engine in the "downsized body", and I told my wife when I went home for lunch, that it was a
keeper. Luckily I have a very understanding wife who knew that I could not
let my "partner ", that I had been through so much with, go to a junk yard so when the car finally hit the auction yard in February 1978, she let me buy it. We bid $357 to be the high bidder in a sealed bid auction. I have all the original documents including the window sticker, showing a sticker price of $4286. The County in 1974 bought 55 cars, and only 4 were "black and white" traffic cars like mine (regular Sheriff patrol cars were green
and white). I've been told that on a fleet purchase, the County probably
paid about $3600 per car. When the car was assigned to me it had about 60 miles on it. When it was auctioned it had about 75,000 miles, and we just turned 91,000 last year.
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The car originally went in service as a "smooth top" traffic car with a red spotlight on the driver side, and PR lights in the back window. Late in
1974 the Sheriff's Department wanted to test the "new" Federal Twinsonic CTS" lightbar as a replacement for the old Federal bubblegum beacon, so they bought 2 lightbars and installed them on 2 of our smooth top traffic cars.
The Twinsonic was met with overwhelming positive feedback for its improved lighting/warning. However, there were 2 problems with the lightbar. The sun shining thru the lightbar lenses made it look like it was activated when it wasn't and citizens were constantly pulling over. The other problem was discovered by CHP testing. In their tests they found that a car with the Twinsonic lightbar lost 15mph in top end speed over the same car with out the lightbar. So instead of topping out at 140, it would only go 125!
Although the factory EPA fuel mileage estimate that came with the car indicated that the Coronet with the 440 would average "9.5 miles per gallon", I never got over 7mpg in patrol. It was made to run, and to run very fast. The Sheriff's Department in 1974 downsized the patrol fleet from the full size Fury's and Polara's to the midsize Coronet due consumer gas prices having gone all the way up to an average of $.53/gallon!!!!
I guess you can tell that I'm still in love with the Coronet, and my wife of
43 years is still patient with me.
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