{"id":12743,"date":"2023-05-12T21:06:35","date_gmt":"2023-05-12T21:06:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/?p=12743"},"modified":"2023-05-15T21:28:15","modified_gmt":"2023-05-15T21:28:15","slug":"the-marauder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2023\/05\/12\/the-marauder\/","title":{"rendered":"The Marauder"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thedrive.com\/news\/34755\/the-legend-of-the-fhp-mercury-marauder-the-fastest-and-rarest-panther-of-them-all\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">from The Drive<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h1 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The Legend of the Florida Highway Patrol Mercury Marauder, the Fastest, Rarest Panther of Them All<\/h1>\n\n\n\n<p>Twenty years ago, the Florida Highway Patrol rolled out a fleet of souped-up Mercury Marauders for high-speed pursuits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>BY<a href=\"https:\/\/www.thedrive.com\/author\/jesus-garcia\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"> JESUS GARCIA<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.thedrive.com\/uploads\/2020\/07\/07\/mercury-marauder-fhp.jpg?auto=webp&amp;crop=16%3A9&amp;auto=webp&amp;optimize=high&amp;quality=70&amp;width=1440\" alt=\"Culture photo\" title=\"The Legend of the Florida Highway Patrol Mercury Marauder, the Fastest, Rarest Panther of Them All\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>I spotted a Ford<a href=\"https:\/\/www.thedrive.com\/news\/33087\/youll-never-get-another-chance-to-buy-a-3k-mile-ford-crown-victoria-police-interceptor\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">\u00a0Crown Victoria Police Interceptor<\/a>\u00a0on duty this week. It was a Laredo Police Department patrol car, and it gave me a touch of sentimentality seeing this decade-old workhorse. The odometers on these P71 Interceptors are rapidly reaching \u201cI&#8217;m too old for this shit.\u201d But seeing that old cop car reminded me of the legend of Florida\u2019s fastest, rarest Panthers: the Florida Highway Patrol Mercury Marauders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Twenty years ago, Florida\u2019s highways were patrolled by a special group of unmarked 2004 Mercury Marauders thanks to an anonymous donor who gifted 27 cars to the Florida Highway Patrol, and a local tuner named named\u00a0<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.motortrend.com\/features\/138-0301-lincoln-mark-viii-dennis-reinhart\/\" target=\"_blank\">Dennis Reinhart<\/a>\u00a0who modified them for use in high-speed pursuits. The Marauder was already a hotted-up version of the standard Crown Vic, with a 302-hp V8 out of the Mustang Mach 1. But Reinhart took it further with a host of mods that made these the ultimate sleeper sedans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[ <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thedrive.com\/news\/34755\/the-legend-of-the-fhp-mercury-marauder-the-fastest-and-rarest-panther-of-them-all\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">click to continue reading at The Drive<\/a> ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>from The Drive The Legend of the Florida Highway Patrol Mercury Marauder, the Fastest, Rarest Panther of Them All Twenty years ago, the Florida Highway Patrol rolled out a fleet of souped-up Mercury Marauders for high-speed pursuits. BY JESUS GARCIA I spotted a Ford\u00a0Crown Victoria Police Interceptor\u00a0on duty this week. It was a Laredo Police [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-art"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12743\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}