1971 Chevrolet Caprice
Last month, while exploring the depths of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, I came across a few cars worth photographing, but this is the only one I shot in depth. It’s a Chevy Caprice, and I found it in downtown L’Anse, a small village at the bottom of Keweenaw Bay.
This is the first model year for the second-generation Caprice, a certified land yacht, especially compared to newer two-door cars. The Caprice would become a popular police car later in life, but the nameplate died in the States in 1996. It was revived elsewhere in the world in the 2000s and saw life as a Police Patrol Vehicle in the States starting in 2009, but that fizzled by 2017.
You’re more likely to see a second-gen Caprice like this one than a PPV, especially in Michigan. This one appears to be in pretty stellar shape, which, at first, made me question whether it was from Michigan. Those thoughts were answered when I walked behind the car and saw that the plate was from Florida. That’s a heck of a drive!
Shooting this car made me think about how fun it would be to explore the rugged wilderness of the Upper Peninsula in a car like this—and how dangerous it could be if you got stuck somewhere deep in no-cell-service land. Still, these cars tackled the unknown back when they were new, even if that was over a half-century ago!
