My Favorite Ride: 2008 Ford Crown Victoria transformed from cop cruiser to mud car

SULLIVAN — That little kid strapped into a car seat in the Bowman family’s 1956 Ford F100 in a photo from a 2013 My Favorite Ride column is 14 now and will be driving in two years.

The teen has his eyes set not on the nearly 70-year-old rusty truck that had been in his family for generations, but a certain 2008 Ford Crown Victoria with big mud tires as his first official vehicle.

Once he has that driver’s license in hand, that is. Until then, it’s his dad behind the wheel.

This Crown Vic started out as a shiny and well-equipped police car in the Daviess County city of Washington. “It’s had a few different lives after that, as a medical transport vehicle, a boat hauler, and then I ended up with it through a trade in 2016. And I just started driving it,” Jon Bowman said.

When the pandemic hit, Bowman had time on his hands. “Up until spring of 2021, it was still a bone-stock police car down to the plastic hub caps. I always wanted to do something with the car — it was the perfect blank canvas — but wasn't sure what.”

Scrolling through social media one day, he found an online group of people turning Crown Vics into off-road vehicles. “I was instantly hooked. I asked questions and figured out how to put something like this together and started collecting parts.”

He started with 23-inch off-road Falken Wildpeak AT3 tires, and the transformation continued from there.

The cop car modifications included a 3-inch donk suspension lift kit, a 2-inch body spacer lift, a roof basket, 4.30 gears, a Truetrac posi unit differential, a 13,000-pound winch, a Jeep off-road front bumper, CB radio, a touch-screen radio for a backup camera system, five light bars, off road front lighting, LED lighting conversion inside and out, Lincoln Town Car heated seats “and probably a dozen other things I'm forgetting,” he said.

His expectations were not high, but once he put the car together, “it turned into a real masterpiece,” he said. The day before the Sullivan Rotary Club’s Corn Festival Parade that year, he slapped some giant Falken decals on the car and drove it in the parade.

“The car has been in the Corn Festival Parade every year since,” he said proudly. “Ninety percent of the people that see it love it and want to know more about it,” he said. “Ten percent wonder why the hell I did that. And the answer to that question is because I wanted to.”

Until this point in his life, Bowman had never been off-roading. Now, he and his boys are hooked.

“We take that thing out to Redbird and have a ball,” Bowman said. Redbird State Recreation Area is a 1,400-mile reclaimed coal mine near Linton that features miles of off-road trails.

His son Max, and 9-year-old brother Derek, join their father on these treks. The trio has big fun when they head that way in the car.

“That girl," Bowman said, referring to the Crown Vic, "is big, and she struggles to get through some of the trails. We get thumbs-up everywhere we go.”

The old Ford is a daily driver as well, one he’ll have to give up when Max hits 16.

And that old Ford truck? It’s still in the family and not far away. Bowman’s cousin, Jeremy Huebner, is president of a car club in Loogootee — a classic car guy without a classic vehicle.

“Three or four years ago, he borrowed the truck and I said, ‘Why don’t you take it for the summer and enjoy it?' And that has been our tradition. He drives it all summer and brings it back to my place to store over the winter.”

Another tradition carries on. Huebner’s toddler son’s car seat is strapped in the truck passenger seat.

Have a story to tell about a car or truck? Contact My Favorite Ride reporter Laura Lane at llane@heraldt.com or 812-318-5967.