Of course, "We are not amused" more or less summarizes our opinion of the Rubens-esque Ford Crown Victoria, a sedan famous as a taxi, as a cop car, and as a mobile condominium in which Uncle Seth can store all four sets of this Callaway Big Berthas.

Still, there's something about the Crown Vic that might amuse. For one thing, it is the last of the affordable full-size, V-8-powered, rear-drive American sedans. And as Chevrolet accidentally demonstrated with its ballsy Impala SS, the market for big, brooding, brutish boulevardiers remains, well, rabid. Sure, it's a lounge lizard of a car, an A&W street racer, a hot rod for Thumper's Third Base Saloon (motto: "Last stop before home"). But if Ford wouldn't create a Dearborn version of the Impala SS, we would. Or blow up engines trying.

Our goal was a sedan that, in all pertinent performance measurements, would surpass the Impala SS we tested in June 1994. We started with an inky-black Crown Vic--black being the hue befitting full-figured personalities such as Marlon Brando and the queen herself. It was the civilian version that anyone can buy, rather than the restricted cop-car flavor. It arrived with the handling-and-performance package ($615) and ABS with traction control ($775). The total came to $26,200.

When we picked it up, our Vic didn't look like much. It looked like what Tom Orlando was probably driving when Dawn quit. So we immediately drove it to Dennis Burgor's Custom Ordered Police Supplies (acronym COPS, naturally) in Taylor, Michigan. All we originally required was a pair of utility spotlights ($175) mounted on the A-pillars, plus a Holbrecht grille guard ($175) with which we could bull our way through ugly domestic disturbances and ticket riots at Yanni concerts.

"You need more than that," dead-panned Burgor, who outfits cop cars for a living. When our backs were turned, he also installed a Uniden BearTracker 800 BCT7 police scanner, a Cobra SoundTracker CB radio, a pair of PIAA driving lights capable of illuminating previously unmapped sections of the moon, headlight flashers, tinted windows, and a $935 Sound Off strobe-light system that causes our Crown Vic to resemble Caesars Palace at night and is probably illegal in 48 states. The total came to $2728. Burgor gave us a discount that amounted to $2728.

As truckers slammed on brakes in front of us, we drove to see 50-year-old Kenny Brown, whose 18,500-square-foot shop in Indianapolis is famous for unloosing big-horsepower Mustangs (most recently, the 450-hp 289RS Cobra). Brown, who is the right age to understand why persons in the Sixties purchased 390-cubic-inch tri-carb Ford Galaxies, accepted the assignment as if it had come from the pope's mechanic. He assured us the outcome would humiliate an Impala SS, though perhaps not in price. He even let us use the men's room.

Our goal was to obtain a minimum of 300 horsepower from the Crown Vic's 4.6-liter SOHC V-8. We started by installing an SVO/Eaton supercharger and intake manifold, with the blower set at five pounds of wheeze. We were rewarded with 60 additional hp. Not enough.

We next installed a set of lower-compression pistons that allowed us to double the boost, a combination good for a total of 370 horsepower and, unfortunately, more detonation that Navy SEALs encounter in a whole career--enough, in fact, that on a 95-degree day, as we were noodling out engine-computer calibrations at Ford's test track, a connecting rod tunneled its way through the iron block and, last time we saw it, was touring downtown Dearborn.

We wept. One editor asked if he could obtain closure. Brown trailered the whole leaky mess home. I began to siphon funds from the Csaba Csere birthday fund.

Then the Ford Panther platform engineers--these are the guys in charge of the Vic, her pudgy siblings the Marquis, and the Town Car (and who are ultra blase about mechanical mayhem that accrues during testing)--calmly said, "Oh, you want a new engine? 'Cause, we can, like, ship you one."

Saved again by the ghost of Henry.

Engine configuration No. 3, fortunately for the budget, was a champ. We returned to stock pistons (now attached to manly Manly connecting rods) and dialed in eight pounds of boost. We then bolted on a pair of SVO cylinder heads with slightly altered combustion chambers and ports polished to a Bulgari-quality luster. We further installed 30-pound-per-hour injectors, a 10-millimeter-larger mass-air sensor, a 190-liter-per-hour fuel pump, and an air-intake tube (inelegantly dubbed the "snorkus") the size of the Chunnel.

With that much oxygen and fuel invited to the party, the V-8 easily thumped out 355 horsepower at 5500 rpm and--miracle of miracles!--had also divested itself of its detonatin' proclivities, at least as long as the fuel tank was awash in 94-octane unleaded. Any asthmatic artifacts were further attenuated by a pair of big-bruiser Borla mufflers and a custom stainless exhaust that concludes in two colossal chrome tips you will never observe poking out of Uncle Seth's Crown Vic.

Then we set to work on other weaknesses.

We installed a set of what Car Craft used to call "monster meats"--17-inch BFGoodrich Comp T/As astride eight-inch wide Motoform wheels that we powder-coated black--these, to match the powder coated grille, the powder coated taillight surround, and the powder coated door handles. Our Ford began to look like a West Virginia coal miner after a double shift. We next slapped on a set of carbon/Kevlar brake pads. And because he was still suffering involuntary spasms of the gut induced by our previous detonation nightmares, Kenny Brown purchased a set of AutoMeter fuel-pressure and boost gauges, which he lashed to the driver's side A-pillar and thereafter never stopped monitoring.

In the Crown Vic's nose, we implanted stiffer coil springs that we liberated from a bin of cop-car parts, then trimmed them to a lower ride height. At the rear, we tricked the airbag springs into matching the height of the now-drooping snout. Bilstein shocks were inserted in favor of a trial set of Konis that proved too jarring. We opted for a 25-millimeter Addco anti-roll bar at the rear, plus stiffer front anti-roll-bar bushings and stiffer rear upper-control-arm bushings. We dispensed with the 3.27:1 rear end in favor of a zestier 3.73 Torsen connected to a NASCAR driveshaft balanced up to 200 mph. (See, it pays to hang around Gasoline Alley.) To avoid a USS Thresher-style structural collapse, we welded a pile of 1.25 -inch tubing into triangulated from stiffeners that extended some nine feet before evolving into a Golden Gate crossmember under the radiator. It looks like something Bud Moore might have concocted.

With engine No.3 bawling like a Malaysian civet, we headed for the test track. Our queen did not disappoint. With minimal wheelspin, the Vic bagged 60 mph in 6.0 seconds (a half-second quicker than the Impala SS) and laid waste to the quarter-mile in 14.6 seconds at 97 mph (0.4 second and 5 mph better than the Impala). The acceleration continued unabated to 150 mph, besting the Impala's top speed by 8 mph. We even outflanked the Impala on a green and cold skidpad, logging a 0.87-g average, during which tester "Oswald" Schroeder could hang out the tail five degrees, 20 degrees, or--whoops!--180 degrees. It was fun. Our lone humiliation was an unsatisfying braking distance--192 feet, versus the Impala's 179--which demonstrates the effect of even small mismatches among brakes, tires, and ABS computers. (We're working on a fix.)

And so it is official: We now possess a 4270-pound sedan that corners as well as, accelerates as hard as, and tops out as potently as--could this be right?--a Mustang Cobra convertible. Wait until the Police Car Owners of America find out.

Driving this brute, what you notice first is its ominous exhaust note--a deep, lumpity growl that is surprising from a forced-induction engine. It sounds like a big block, yet there is little aural intrusion. In fact, at a steady 70-mph cruise, there's 1 dBA less racket than you'd experience inside an Impala SS. Under wide-open whack, however, the V-8 makes a noise unique in motordom. Think of Placido Domingo with his toe caught in a mangle. It's half mellifluous shriek, half hellacious howl--a supercharger whine that recollects some netherworld fusion of Lamborghini V-12 and Carrier air conditioner. At the test track, we could identify it a quarter-mile away. It is wonderful.

From rest, you can bark the Vic's rear tires if you work at it, but a gentle street start from a 5-mph roll will still get you to 60 mph in 6.1 seconds. As the speed climbs, the transmission (whose line pressure we reprogrammed) bangs off shifts that are borderline harsh. Meanwhile, the hood quivers and wobbles as if it were trying to relocate to a better neighborhood. Throughout it all, we were pleased that the steering is now less wishy-washy. Ford gave us a new steering box that delivers tauter on-center feel, less power assist, and about 25 percent more obedience. It should be a mandatory Vic kit.

As the skidpad figure suggests, cornering grip is high, even though our Vic still evinces moderate body roll. On public roads, it's difficult to squeal those fat tires. You can lay this Vic into off-ramps as if it were a Z28, though it's harder to steer with the throttle. Unfortunately, we're still a little miffed that when both front wheels take a simultaneous impact, this body-on-frame car shudders. There's a nervous quiver that travels up the steering column into your fingers and another that moves through the accelerator into your toes. We had hoped to eradicate it with the chassis stiffeners. Nonetheless, beyond 50 mph, our Vic begins to dispatch road irregularities as competently as a Cadillac STS, tracking superbly, reacting with confidence. It may be the only project car whose grip we increased and whose ride wasn't thereafter forever frazzled.

Of course, we're still disgusted with the seats. To effect a fix, we wadded up sone stuffing and force-fed it into the mouse-fur front bench, which previously offered the bolsters of a Catholic-church pew. That chair has now assumed the supportiveness of, well, a Lutheran-church pew.

All our ministrations added $27,270 to the cost of $26,200 Crown Vic, meaning we could have been driving around in a Lexus GS400 with an unmolested warranty and with cash left over for strobe lights. You can slightly lessen the sting by deleting the 17-inch tires and wheels ($1070), the 3.73:1 Torsen diff ($1428), the NASCAR driveshaft ($698), and the cop-car accouterments ($2728). Remember to wait six months before driving your donor car to Indianapolis, thus avoiding luxury tax.

Our Mr. Brown (317-247-5320) says he will market this vehicle as the "Kenny Brown Hot Pursuit." We weren't crazy about that name, and someone--I am not going to accept responsibility for this-- scraped off Ken's yellow and red decals before the photo shoot. Throughout this car's gestation, C/D editors had alternately referred to it as Project Bad Boy, the Staff Car, the Samuel L. Jackson Memorial Pipe-Swingin' Arrest-Me Machine, the Whangdoodle, and the King Consort--a title that Queen Victoria asked to have bestowed on her abused husband. I simply called it Senator Packwood.

"One thing's for sure: It's the most popular car I've ever modified," says Brown. "I've produced 400-horsepower Mustangs that get ignored, but this thing drives people insane. I've already had the [Indiana] highway patrol ask me about it. And the gas pumps, you can't get away without five or six interviews."

This is true. You want to meet people? Drive a Lamborghini LM002 or our project Crown Victoria. So far, two police cruisers have followed me into my garage to ask questions. (Okay, okay. This has possibly happened to me once or twice before.)

For all this attention, we must thank the Panther engineers, Ford's SVO, and whoever was previously watching Dearborn's generous PR budget and who is now almost certainly undergoing conflict-resolution therapy at Betty Ford (who, as we all know, is not even distantly related to Edsel). Of course, Ford can't be too torqued over the project, because its engineers are rumored to be testing their own version fitted with a 5.4-liter four-valve V-8. "The prototype is parked behind Jack Roush's shop," assures our mole, a man who also predicted Arianna Stassinopoulos Huffington's comeback. "The weird thing is, if the car is built--possibly in a 4000-unit run--it will be sold by Lincoln Mercury and called the Marauder."