ATS Road Trip: Ford Crown Victoria Specs and First Details
The first car from the Ford Car Pack to get its own close-up is not the Mustang. SCS Software has picked the Ford Crown Victoria, and it has come with a much fuller spec sheet than anything the studio has published for Road Trip so far.
A sedan built for fleets
SCS runs through the background first. The Crown Victoria was built from 1992 to 2012 on Ford’s rear-wheel-drive Panther platform, a body-on-frame design that gave it its reputation for toughness. Police departments and taxi firms took it up in large numbers from the late 1990s, and SCS puts total production at around 1.5 million cars.
Which Crown Vic you get
The in-game car is the 2006-onward base Crown Victoria, a civilian-oriented version of the Police Interceptor. It shares the Interceptor’s layout and hardware but has a slightly softer, everyday driving character.
| Ford Crown Victoria in ATS | |
|---|---|
| Engine | 4.6L SOHC V8 |
| Output | 224 hp, 275 lb-ft |
| Gearbox | electronic 4-speed automatic with overdrive |
| Drive | rear-wheel drive |
| Steering | speed-sensitive power steering |
| Brakes | four-wheel discs with ABS |
| Front suspension | short/long-arm with stabilizer bar |
| Rear suspension | Watt’s linkage, monotube shock absorbers |
| Fuel tank | 19 gallons |
| Other | fail-safe engine cooling, battery saver with 30-minute shut-off, stainless steel dual exhaust |
Those last few items will not change how it drives, but the 19-gallon tank is a useful number for anyone planning long stretches between fuel stops.
Interceptor looks, leather inside
On the outside the car borrows the Police Interceptor’s plain, hard-wearing look: black grille, black door handles, mirrors and rear trunk panel, and steel wheels. The giveaway is inside, where black synthetic leather seats replace the Interceptor’s cloth. The screenshots show it in black, red and white, out in the desert, on a mountain road, at dusk and in front of a city skyline at night, all marked as work in progress.
Our take
Choosing the civilian car rather than the Interceptor itself is a tidy solution. Players get the look everyone knows from police dramas without SCS having to ship a police car, and the studio is open about what it expects next: it says it is looking forward to modders “turning it into everything from taxis to police cruisers.” Given how ATS modding works, we would be surprised if that took long after release.
Source: SCS Software blog. Images and video: SCS Software.
