This is one image that stumped me. A 1956 Chevrolet patrol car, two cops, and a rather jolly woman in handcuffs. Just what exactly is going on here? A publicity stunt? Some kind of police training? Some weird hanky panky?
I ran this by Paul, and between the two we figured… We’ll never crack this one! Let CCers sort it out!
That’s an odd one! My first thought is that everyone is so happy because the 56 Chevy is such a great car and they are just delighted that’s the car they are using. So delighted, they had a photo taken even!
She won a prize for being the 1,000th arrestee of 1956?
I can’t imagine what’s going on here (other than a publicity stunt like you mentioned).
But the car appears to be a Connecticut State Police car. Blowing up the photo shows the Connecticut license plate, and then the red thing that’s barely visible to the left of the plate is a reflective placard that Connecticut State Police used, that said “STATE POLICE.”
As they said in Chevy police car ads of the day, “They don’t get away when you’ve got a Chevrolet“
They might get away from this one…
No “V” under the bow tie means its a 235 six.
No clue on what’s going on here though.
It’s interesting that the ad shows a 210, while a police version would more likely be a 150 like the subject car.
Was Chevrolet trying to upsell with that ad? 😉
And click the image and you’ll see the one in the ad does have the V under the Chevy emblem. The stove pipes were probably just fine for city duty, but I imagine all highway patrol types had a V8 back in the day.
I believe the 6 was called (not by GM!) the “stove bolt six”… 216 cu in iirc? One would almost expect them to be put together with square nuts like old farm machinery! lol
Wife, daughter, or girlfriend (or some combination thereof) of one of these guys’ colleagues. She’s in on the joke of course and is barely holding it together while another cop snaps the picture that will be used for some birthday or retirement or roast, promotion celebration, or something like that.
I’m sure they were yucking it up over this for years to come.
As, sadly, the FORMER owner of a 1956 150, 2 dr. sedan, like the one pictured, I pretty much always grinned when I got in her to drive someplace with the ’66 327 firing smoothly under her hood. I didn’t pass all that many gas stations and with that engine she really wasn’t all that quick (15.9/qtr; my ’20 Accord EX 1.5L turbo will match it, but DOES pass gas stations!! 🙂 ), but I always enjoyed driving the old girl, and she did have room for 6 people! What modern CAR can claim that here in the U.S. market??
The ’56 was a California built (Van Nuys assembly plant) vehicle that had spent her life in L.A. She was pretty much rust free when I bought her 1 Feb., 1970. Only about 1100 miles over 100,000 was showing; despite that her “stovebolt” 6 thru a rod @ 2 weeks later. That is why she had a ’66 327 under the hood. It was the smallest V8 I could rapidly find and install.
The old ’56 served me very well for 20 years…..I $till miss her! :(:( DFO
Even before the internet, there were “way weird”, pics.lol
Then Broderick Crawford said:
“Capt. Dan Mathews here. You shoulda been driving a “57 Dodge squad car, understeering & throwing out gravel through every turn out in the wild west. 10-4.”
The young woman’s brother and dad are the friendly cops!
Back when a simple red “gumball” was enough to identify a police car. Nowadays you need a full-width red/white/blue light bar and flashing LEDs and strobe lights hidden in every conceivable body crevice.
There’s something so eternally “right” about the size and shape of a tri-five Chevy; by 1959 they’d lost the plot so completely.
I can’t answer the key question, but I suspect Jeff Sun may be on to somethign, but interested to understand why the Police chose a less practical 2 door over a 4 door.
How about to keep arrested suspects from escaping? As well as to save a not totally insignificant amount on the purchase price?
2-door cop cars were very common back then, for these reasons. One of the reasons 4-door cop cars became so common in later years is because there were no 2-door sedans anymore.
I know it completely isn’t, but until I expended the pic, it gave me vibes of being arrested by Officer Obie and getting dragged into the poh-lease station with the 6×9 color pictures with the arrows on the front and a paragraph on the back describing what the arrow was pointing at.
Certainly old stomping-ground Berkshire vibes going on here. Even if CT…