Looking to go cheap for a van to test out this lifestyle while in grad school. I’ve been eyeing some retired police Ford Explorer (or Police Interceptor) SUV’s for conversion. A 2014, 2015, or 2016 has been going for about $3,000-4,000 and has about 150-160k miles on it. Aside from being cheap vehicles, they come without back seats (saving me a little bit of time trying to figure out how to remove them) and provide an extra stealth mode as they look like undercover cop cars. 99% of my time in the vehicle will be in highly populated, high crime, urban areas.
Because I am in school, cheap, safe, and live-able are my key words here.
Is this a terrible idea? What are your thoughts? Any suggestions?
I don’t know what kind of gas mileage those will get, but more importantly I remember reading a news article about carbon monoxide problems inside those vehicles. I would suggest some serious research into that before considering one.
Cheers!
"Opportunities are everywhere, but only action makes it happen." ~ Van_Dweller
Ooh, thank you for the input, I hadn’t heard that and I will look into it! I wonder if that was discovered by police officers sitting in their vehicles with their engines running. I’ll do some more research!
One thing to keep in mind is that even though the vehicle may only have 160k miles on it, it could have 500k+ worth of wear and tear on the engine due to idling hours. Police officers typically leave their vehicles running when responding to a call, this causes the vehicle to be left on for a very large portion of their shift.
Police vehicles are typically kept on a pretty strict maintenance schedule which keeps them in pretty good condition. But you gotta think, the police department doesn’t want to spend the $60-$70k to buy a new cruiser unless they have to, so if a 2016 Tahoe with only 110k miles is being retired, there is probably something wrong with it. I’m not saying you can’t find a great deal, you just gotta be careful, who knows, you could find your next Blues Mobile!