The Detroit News reports that Ford’s next police interceptor will be based on the same platform as the Taurus, the D3 chassis.

The D3 chassis is quite a flexible chassis, underpinning everything from the Taurus to the Volvo XC90 to the Ford Flex (Although the Flex uses a lengthened version known as D4). A few things to be worried about however. If the Taurus is indeed used, there will be no RWD, as the D3 chassis is only FWD and AWD. Chances are, an AWD system will be fitted for its police duty, or if Ford is really stupid, it’ll be FWD. Also, the D3 chassis lacks frame rails, it’s a unibody. Unibodies generally aren’t thought of as very tough cars, so Ford will have to pull off something quite special to make a unibody police interceptor.

The good things about this though, is that if it is Taurus based, it will most likely be based on the SHO. So expect cheap, tough Taurus SHOs on the used car market some time from now if this is true. Well, I can’t confirm tough, but definitely cheap. As we reported yesterday, the car will be unveiled tomorrow in Las Vegas, although today we’ve found out the exact location: the Las Vegas Motor Speedway. So tomorrow we’ll know for sure what this new police interceptor will be like.

Source: The Detroit News via Autoblog