The Ford Crown Victoria, a reliable staple of police fleets for many years, is going the way of the dodo. Come August, Ford will begin production on a new Police Interceptor based on its Taurus model. Ford will retire the Crown Victoria, a cruiser authorities said has controlled between 75 and 80 percent of the police market since the 1990s.

That means that in the next year, police departments throughout the country will be evaluating their fleets and determining how to replace a cruiser that has become synonymous with patrol work.

“The Crown Victoria has been the best unit for us for quite a number of years,” said Cape Elizabeth police Chief Neil Williams, adding that its size, rear wheel drive and durability made it a desirable car for his department, which has six in its fleet.

The size of the Crown Victoria, Williams said, allowed plenty of room for the department equipment. Since police officers in Cape Elizabeth are also emergency responders to medical calls, a full-size vehicle with lots of room to store the necessary police and medical services equipment is needed.

In the Crown Victoria’s absence, he said, there will be several units for police departments to choose from, including two Ford vehicles, a sedan and a utility vehicle, the Chevrolet Caprice and the Dodge Charger.

“We are looking at all avenues right now,” said Williams, who does the ordering for the department. “We were just fortunate to order two Crown Victorias from Ford’s last shipment. Those will be delivered to us sometime in June. That gives us a year to a year and a half to look at all the other units out there.”

Williams said he is looking at either the Ford or Chevrolet product. That, however, will depend on the price and whether the equipment in the Crown Victoria can be transferred to the new vehicle.

“My understanding is most of the equipment for the Crown Victoria will fit the new Ford vehicle,” he said, though he said he’s not sure.

The new Ford, according to Shawn Adams, Westbrook’s public safety vehicle technician, comes equipped with rear vision cameras, collision alerts, blind spot avoidance, roll stability control and other features that are becoming standard in civilian vehicles.

One downside, according to Maine State Police fleet manager Dave Blake, is that Ford will only offer front- or all-wheel-drive cruisers going forward. There most likely will be training associated with the switch since the Crown Victoria is a rear-wheel-drive car, he said.

The Crown Victoria’s full frame made it the safest vehicle around for police, he added.

“I can show you pictures of a Crown Victoria (after a crash) and how a police officer ever walked away is beyond me. It’s because of the full frame,” he said.

Blake said each model companies offered as their police vehicles has its pros and cons: The Crown Victoria has very strong brakes, while a car like the Chevrolet Caprice has traditionally had weak ones, he said.

With 505 vehicles in the Department of Public Safety – 270 of them Crown Victorias – state police must think carefully before making a purchase, he said.

“We’re still thinking about it,” Blake said. “We’ll probably look at everything.”

The fleet at the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office is also made up of Crown Victorias. The sheriff’s office runs between 38 and 40 cruisers and the department purchases around 10 each year, said Capt. Jeff Davis, patrol division commander.

That department is also investigating the issue, but like elsewhere, Davis said, “At this time we don’t have a lot of answers.”

For the county, the decision will come down to price, he said. Once the county budget is approved, the sheriff’s office will start up a bidding process, he said.

“I think everybody is in the same boat,” Williams said. “Nobody seems to be able to get a handle on price, so it makes it extremely difficult for budgeting purposes.”

Davis, like many officers, will miss the Crown Victoria. A 30-year law enforcement veteran, he said he has driven cruisers as varied as the Dodge Charger and even a Pontiac LeMans.

“When those Crown Vics came out, we stuck to them,” he said. “It’s just been a very good vehicle and I think that’s why you’re seeing upward of 75 percent of police officers across the country are in them.”

David Grover, a captain in the Scarborough Police Department who has been in charge of the department’s fleet purchasing since 2002, said Scarborough has been using Crown Victorias since the early 2000s, when Chevrolet replaced its rear-drive Caprice with a front-drive Impala.

“Since 2002, since I have been doing to fleet purchasing, the Crown Victoria has been a very good service vehicle for us,” Grover said. ‘We haven’t had too many major maintenance problems.”

Today, Grover said, the fleet includes seven Crown Victorias in the patrol division and two in the detective unit.

The department is in the process of ordering another Crown Victoria and will continue to look at the other options available.

He said he has seen a prototype of the new Chevrolet Caprice, which will begin being sold in 2011, but the final details of that is not available yet.

Scarborough police Sgt. Steve Thibodeau said as a car enthusiast and someone who spends hours a day in the vehicles, he is anxious to see which model the department decides on.

Like their counterparts in Cape Elizabeth and Scarborough, police officers in South Portland are beginning the search for a police vehicle or vehicles to replace the Crown Victorias on the fleet.

Barry Meserve, the department’s mechanic who has been working on police vehicles in South Portland and Scarborough for 40 years, said the bulk of the department’s 32 vehicles are Crown Victorias, although the department does have two Chevy Malibus and a Chevy Tahoe.

The department, Meserve said, is in the process of ordering four more Crown Victorias, which will get them through 2011.

Meserve and Chief Ed Googins have been looking at other models. They tested out a Dodge Charger a month ago and were impressed with the performance. Googins, president of the Maine Police Chiefs Association, looked at a new Chevy Caprice at a conference in Orlando, Fla., but Meserve has yet to see the vehicle.

Meserve said he and Googins were not impressed with the new Ford Interceptor, in part because of its small frame size and its price tag of $10,000 more than the Crown Victoria.

“By 2012, we will have to be going with a smaller vehicle,” said Meserve. “What that is, we are not exactly sure yet.”