Who would see that the year was wrong? (it was wrong, as the car was 3 years too young anyway).
In the French "Taxi 2" they used a brand new Peugeot 406, mk2, rather than use an old one mk1, thought it was supposed to be the same car

But then I guess the decision to use a used car was because the character had spent years modifying it.

What was said is not very important, my message under the URL explained it It was an example of a not-new car in a typical case like the one you described, where a brand-new car would have been expected

Very useful, thanks for telling me about it!

It was really cheap of them to use a used a Crown Vic, they are not very expensive cars.

bablefish helps you out http://world.altavista.com/tr
works for me

Unfortunately I don't speak French so I can't understand much of what is being said on that page.

Last time that I supposed that, I was wrong
http://www.imcdb.org/vehicle_5913-Ford-Crown-Victoria-2002.html
they used a 2-year old Ford to play the role of a 5-year old Ford where they could simply use a brand-new one...

When a movie features a car that is obiviously brand new, with a lot of mainstream Hollywood films, the studios have deals with car companies to feature their newest products in their films, should we start automatically listing the car as being made in the year the film was shot? Remember it takes about a year to make a film from pre-production to release, so films are often shot in the year before it is released, unless it is released late in the year, but with a car that looks completely new even though you can't always prove 100% what year it was made, it is fair enough to assume it was new when it was used in the film. With big budget movies they would definetely be able to get new cars especially if they have product placement deals.