I began my 28 year career in military law enforcement (USAF) in 1978. It may not have had the excitement or splendor of flying an F-15, but it was enjoyable. As a car guy, one highlight for me was driving all the various vehicles in the fleet – here are just some thoughts and recollections of some of the good ones and some of the bad. Photos are not mine, but examples found on the web.
The Good:
1984 Ford LTD LX. Most of the big-block Fords, Dodges, and Chevies were gone by the time I took the oath….so we were saddled with some real late 70’s-early 80’s gutless wonders – two outlined farther below. So when these 5.0 engined LXs came out in ’84, they were a real revelation. I’m sure CC readers are aware of the 1984-85 Fox-bodied LTD LX – Ford’s attempt at a RWD European sports sedan. The Police Package had all the LX performance upgrades plus even stronger brakes and a firmer suspension. The 5.0 throttle body injected Windsor V8 made 165 hp and 245 ft lbs of torque at a low 2200 rpm. It was quick. They weren’t without their downsides – the interior was very cramped, but I can remember laying a good six foot patch of rubber responding to a robbery exercise once – never did that in a Slant-six Volare…
Toyota Mark II Taxi – similar to police version
1989 Toyota Mark II. Being a military cop stationed overseas meant we had a more varied fleet than a typical small town department – many of our vehicles were local purchase. In Japan, we had several 89/90 Toyota Mark IIs, a mid-sized RWD sedan, with a 1.8 liter four cylinder. They were mediocre in most aspects except for one – they never broke. Most of ours had over 250K miles on them – still with the original engine and transmission, and all of those miles came from hard GI-level abuse. Yet get in, turn the key, and off you went. At around 300K we would turn them in for salvage – I can remember driving one that we were just about to dispose of – the steering wheel had been gripped by so many hands that the hard rubber had disintegrated – and felt like silly putty. But it still ran just fine.
Honorable Mention:
Ford Crown Victoria – all years. Universally liked by all patrolmen, nothing outstanding but did everything well, most durable of the American models, only gripe was with the partition installed the rear seating was pretty tight.
1979 Plymouth Volare. Slant-six and Torqueflight meant it always started and went (slowly), fairly roomy inside, seemed better built than later Chryslers.
Japanese Police 2002 Legacy – similar to our 1999
1999 Subaru Legacy. Police-spec version of the B4 sports sedan, tight inside but AWD a real plus, the normally aspirated 2.0 DOHC engine and 4-speed auto transmission worked perfectly together. Quick. Japanese Police versions had the twin-turbocharged 256 hp engines. Those were quicker…and we were envious.
The Bad:
1973 AMC Matador. To be fair, this was not a police-spec vehicle – it was a regular Matador – one of many that served as USAF staff cars in the ‘70s and were passed down to the cops. Maybe if it had been one of the upgraded LAPD versions like Malloy and Reed drove in Adam 12, I would have felt different, but this AMC was a poor police unit, for two reasons. First, the power steering was one of the most disconnected and sloppiest I had ever driven. It must have taken 8-9 turns to go from lock to lock, and it was absolutely lifeless. I had driven 60s and 70s Fords, which I thought were bad, but this Matador was worse. Second, it wallowed like a barge. The police package would have likely addressed these two shortcomings, as the police-spec models received high scores in the LAPD tests. But as it was, this was a scary vehicle to drive.
1997 Chevrolet Lumina. I’ll sum up the Lumina with this one anecdote. I had an important meeting to attend downtown so asked for our newest vehicle to ensure I’d get there and arrive on time. I received a brand new ‘97 police-spec Lumina with 50 miles on the odometer – still had the new car smell. I drove maybe five blocks when the transmission completely failed – no drive, no reverse, nothing. That pretty much summed up our experience with these Luminas – they were always down for something; transmission, ECM modules, alternators, brakes. Maybe they were haunted by their X-car forebears…
The Ugly:
1981-83 Plymouth Reliant/Dodge Aries. Hands down, the worst police vehicle I’ve ever driven. No offense to any K-car owners, but I imagine even you would agree that these were not the most robust vehicles to ever exit a Chrysler factory. Yes they were too small, yes they couldn’t out-run a diesel Chevette, but those things could be overlooked – as long as they ran. And these K-cars didn’t – they literally disintegrated under constant police use. Transmissions usually had to be replaced every six months. Axles right after that. The suspensions wore out and they tended to list, just like a ship taking on water before sinking – an apt metaphor. They spent more time in the garage than on the road. After two years at best, we’d turn them in – they had fallen apart. I hope whoever thought these were a good decision to purchase gets to ride in one to their funeral.
1980 Ford Fairmont. Small, under-powered, poorly built…did I mention under-powered? These Fairmonts were a pitiful thing to drive. They came with the old standby 2.3 liter SOHC “Lima” four cylinder, which may have worked fine in a Pinto, but was terrible for a police unit. The old saying was, take the Fairmont for school zone duty because the only thing you might catch was a kid on a bike. And they were constantly down for maintenance. Like the K-cars, things would routinely fall off – “Quality Is Job #1” was still a few years away at Ford. We had a derogatory name for these Fairmonts, which I can’t repeat…but it was well deserved…
There were other vehicles, good and bad – I’ll try to cover some of those in an upcoming post.
Nothing sadder than a malaise era police car. Smog choked engines, brick like aerodynamics (made much worse with the addition of a light bar on the roof). I can remember cops at the time reminding motorists “you can outrun the car, but you can’t outrun the radio.”
Not surprised about the LTD LX.
It was legit.
Thank you for your service, as well as this well-logged history of the transition from, and redefinition of, pursuit performance vehicles.
The Toyota seems to be the absolute ideal cop car, tough as nails but slow enough to keep a hothead from causing more trouble than what was already happening…
You talked about the ’81-3 K cars but pictured an ’85-up model with the facelift; I seem to remember those staying on the road a bit longer as retail cars and not being as bad an idea as a cheap old beater than the early models. Did the late models hold up any better as a cop car than the early ones?
Yep, this was the only K-car pic I could find. I only had experience with the 81-83 models – fortunately we didn’t have any at my other assignments, so can’t comment on whether the later models were better. I sure hope they were…
The early ones, like almost all truly-new American cars, were fragile. Detroit’s motto was: “Time is the great healer”
“The Humble Car” was a Mitsubishi-powered, police-spec ’84 Reliant I bought from my uncle ($800) to use for mail delivery on a rural route in the early ’90’s. He had used it as a taxi cab for 140,000 miles after placing the winning bid for it at a local police auction, at which it showed 40,000 miles. I drove it -hard- to the 210,000 mile point, trading it in (got the token $400) for a 1990 Cutlass Calais fleet car that blew its “race inspired” engine at 70K.
Other than oil & gas the only money I had to spend was on power steering fluid due to a system leak (cheaper to chase it than to fix it). I found a set of L78-14 snow tires in my parent’s basement (left over from Mom’s ’77 Ventura) and installed them on the front to help me through the mud, snow, gravel and out of the deep ditches on my mail route.
I loved my Humble Car.
Really good read. Seems that civilian spec cars really couldn’t cope with hard usage or multiple indifferent drivers. I’m guessing that any BOF car with the heavy duty underpinnings would have worked better than most of the various FWD stuff that we saw over here. Must have been a chore to be trying to jam larger rowdy individuals into the back seat of a K-car!
I only drove one police car. It was a 1977 Plymouth Gran Fury. With its 440 choked with emissions it was gutless off the line but it really took off once it got going. I took it up to 75 mph on the certified 140 mph speedometer. This seemed brave at the time as as the national speed limit was still 55 mph at the time. My brother in law was a car salesman and helping him make deliveries got me into some interesting rides sometimes.
Even in 1977, that Fury was a legit 135MPH car. It was slow off the line not because of the emission stuff, but because it was a 4800+lb car with highway gears. They were geared for highway running, exacerbated by tall tires.
Notably, it took the LT1 Caprice to match the performance of a 440 Fury.
As an Army MP, I had similar, but slightly different experience. Army fleet managers did a decent job with the MP specs. Vehicles ordered for MP duty got police spec equipment. They were usually pretty good regardless of make. Your Matador is a case in point. We had the cop-spec Matadors at one post and I recall none of the problems you mention.
The problem with the Army was not the vehicle spec process, but the Army fleet management regulations. When I was in, there was a separate procurement policy for security vehicles. All non-tactical MP vehicles were managed under the same fleet management regulations that governed admin use vehicles.
Army regulations at the time required those vehicle to be at least 7 years old and have a minimum of 70k miles before being eligible for replacement. In 24/7 patrols, MP vehicles would typically mile-out within 2 years, but they had to be kept in service another 5 years to age-out.
Admin vehicles were a different world. It wasn’t uncommon for vehicles assigned to an Admin office to age-out at 7 years and still have less than 15-20k on the odometer.
Local Army fleet managers tried to keep the fleet as new as possible to minimize operating costs. Procurement was centralized. Those costs were not their responsibility.
Their solution? Rotate low mileage aged-out admin vehicles into the MP fleet to run up the mileage while assigning newer but high mileage MP vehicles to low use admin offices. This allowed the fleet manager to minimize both old vehicles and excessive mileage vehicles.
A peculiarity of how Army MP units are organized is that unit property includes only assigned tactical vehicles. Law enforcement vehicles were property of whateve post an MP unit was based at. If the MP unit deployed, they took only their tactical vehicles. Law enforcemt vehicles stayed with the post. While the MP Corps had substantial input into how law enforcement vehicles were ordered, local MP units had little say-so in how law enforcement fleets were rotated.
Since most larger Army bases tended to have many more admin vehicles then MP vehicles, it sometimes seemed as though all we had were admin-spec vehicles while some low use admin office had a newer miled-out ex-MP vehicle.
Those nice cop spec Matadors the Army bought? Replaced with admin-spec Hornets and Mavericks. Arrrgh!
Pickup trucks were never cop-spec, but most MPs welcomed them because they often had V8s, firm suspensions and – most important – a roomy enough cab for 2 big MP to complete a shift in reasonable comfort. An added bonus of single cab trucks was that MPs driving one on shift rarely got the hated “special taxi service” call from the desk sergeant. Even as duty officer, I often preferred a truck – except at one base where we were given Chevy LUV trucks. Talk about a dog . . .I think my worst beats your worst!
Greetings fellow LE’er….
I worked closely with the MPs in Korea and Japan – and we used to have many friendly arguments over which were worse – their Hornets or our K-cars. I know our cops would have traded for their Hornets in a heartbeat…:-)
Our fleet management was the same as yours until the early 80’s when we were able to get an SP inserted into the acquisition and contracting process – and were able to manage our own vehicles. It got better in the 90’s when USAF went with GSA – their replacement intervals were much lower and we got newer vehicles more rapidly – nicer ones too.
We had a few Chevy (Isuzu) LUVs when I first came in – small 4 cylinder diesels with three on the tree – you’re right, they were small and slow, but I have to say, compared to a K-car, no matter how much abuse we heaped on them, they always started and ran.
The one classic police car you didn’t have the opportunity to drive was the B body Caprice, especially the later ones with the 350, LT-1. Every cop I know that drove them, loved them. Roomy, great handling with the 9C1 package and powerful with the 260hp version of the LT1 engine from the Corvette. Police departments hung on to these as long as they could and were disappointed with the Panthers that replaced most of them
I was going to save the Caprices for the next post….but you’re correct – they were well liked. My experience with the 9C1 cars was that they were much better “runners”, but in general were down for maintenance more compared to the CVs..
An interesting read, and all of them make sense. Except the Matador – why oh why was AMC incapable of making a decent driving car on this platform?
My father was an MP in Korea in the early 50s – one of the few times he talked about the job I was surprised that they did not drive Jeeps, but Chevy sedans. I wish I had gone into more detail with him on that.
My father was in the Army in Germany about the same time (his regiment was originally supposed to go to Korea, but for a terrible train accident in West Lafayette Ohio which killed a number of his group including some WWIII vets, they instead sent them to Germany. He wasn’t an MP, but told me they were usually issued VW Beetles rather than Jeeps for transportation. Also drove some REO trucks. The Beetle surprised me, I thought there would still have been leftover Jeeps from WWII which ended only 6-7 years prior, but guess not. He was in the artillery, a Howitzer crew member, and in his later years lost most of his high frequency hearing, no doubt due to his early service and no earplugs back then.
He did own 2 AMC Ramblers in the early 60’s, back-to-back Classic wagons, never the Matador nor Ambassador models.
I see people praising the “panther” Fords all the time. I found them to have a tendency to float around and the RWD platform was not great in the snow country of the northern US. You can barely get up a hill in those things in the winter.
Perhaps it’s on a “comparative” basis. I wonder if people in law enforcement drive Panthers as their personal vehicles of choice.
Not sure if you’ve ever drove a P71/CVPI spec Panther Rick, but they’re actually fairly well buttoned down. But you’re absolutely correct on winter – we’d put the snow tires on in Nov and every unit had a set of rubber chains in the trunk.
I have a civilian Crown Vic in Minnesota, a set of Bridgestone Blizzaks, I try to keep the fuel tank half in the winter and I have a 50lb bag of salt in the trunk just in case.
No problems whatsoever. My wife has failed to ascend hills in my mother in law’s Fiesta in St Paul though. (Continental all seasons)
I agree. Winter tires are key for Panther performance in snow. I drive two winter cars, a 93 Grand Marquis (with 80 lb of tools in the trunk) and a 2000 Volvo S70, also with winter tires.
The FWD Volvo is superior, but not by much.
For snowy open roads the Marquis is fine. It’s only at a real disadvantage in low speed maneuvering in the snow, like parking lots. It needs a bit of wheelspin and inevitable sliding for maximum progress and directional control, which isn’t your friend when trying to park.
One thing you need to keep in mind is that the average municipal police car has 3-400lbs of equipment added/carried and much of that is in the trunk. In Panthers it was common to fit a sliding shelf for the radio equipment, and in recent times the computer and often a second battery too. I can’t say I’ve driven a police car with all of that equipment installed but 50lbs in the trunk of any of them make they quite good in the snow if you’ve got good tires. I’m sure they are even better with 100lbs of radio sitting right on top of the rear axle and the misc equipment behind it.
There are two different kinds of Panthers.
The floaty kind the seniors seem to like and the police/CV Sport kind that have little float. Two different kinds of cars. I love my CV Sport, but I wouldn’t even consider buying a GrandMa or a regular Crown Vic just because of the way they handle – or don’t handle, that is.
I expected to not like the Crown Vic Sport I was test driving, until I test drove it. Amazing. I have no idea why anyone would want that floaty crap ride if they could get their hands on a Police Interceptor, Marauder or CV Sport.
I always keep good tires on it. Never had a traction problem.
Actually, I wish my Crown Vic LX was less harsh riding… one of my pet peeves is that the car magazines have all the Luxury cars riding like stiffly sprung Corvettes/Dodge Trucks now… I like to be able to drive from coast to coast without feeling all beat up.. I like a soft, isolated, semi-floaty ride… in fact, I’ve driven 4WD trucks that ride much smoother than most full size cars now…
Time flies. I got two speeding tickets on Langley AFB in 1988 or 89, and I cannot recall what type of car the SP was driving.
In that era, many of the ‘staff cars’ for the top base leaders (who needed a car for official business) were K-cars, which I thought were a bad joke.
Very interesting, thanks for putting this together. I’ve often wondered about how/why in North America it seems to be almost universal (with a few notable exceptions) that very large body on frame vehicles were always the preference whereas in other countries they seem to get along fine with much smaller vehicles, often FWD, often vehicles that are considered very fragile over here. It’s not like they don’t have bad guys too, or even if that were actually the case, why do we have so many more. They also have curbs to drive over, high speed chases, “PIT” maneuvers to conduct, perps to haul away etc. The Subaru seems like a perfect case in point, it’s not very large, is unibody, and has some expensive components but was highly regarded by you. The Cressida/MarkII seems like it would be better being RWD but perhaps underpowered, although in Japan it wouldn’t seem to matter much, I’m sure it could still hit well over 100mph if needed. But over here we “need” Chargers, Crown Vics, Explorers, Tahoes etc for normal patrol duty and many other municipal chores. NYC is the notable exception that I’m aware of where it seemed that there were more hybrid Fusions in police livery than anything else driving around the last time I was there.
Thanks Jim. It’s an interesting question regarding the preference for larger vehicles stateside. My take is part of it is just the long history of BOF vehicles being used and a basic resistance to change. The other is there is still a bit of macho culture in police work in the US, and the “bigger is better because it is more intimidating” view is still there, though from what I’ve seen not as prevalent as it used to be.
I’ve always heard it’s because of the large size of American cops plus all the gear they wear. But watching recent British crime shows, some of those officers (I mean actors) aren’t small, and they’re not Bobbie’s in basic black anymore; they’re laden with all kinds of gear on their belts, bulletproof vests etc and still seem to fit fine in their Ford Focus or Kia patrol cars. Usually with manual transmissions no less. Thanks Jim Brophy for an interesting summary, with your first-hand experiences.
I was astounded by the poor reliability mentioned in the article – usually on CC this happens when a European car is being discussed, and in those cases I am also incredulous at what is being described as it is usually at odds with my experience.
Imagine in 1997 saying “Give me a newer car so I make it to my appointment”.
When I was a small child my local cop shop had 1256cc Vauxhall Chevettes. As a teenager it was non turbo 1.7 diesel Astras. Some patrols now use virtually unmarked Corsas. British Transport police always had Peugeots.
Can they really be suffering from poorer durability than the cars in the article? How could the department even function?
As far as the smaller cars, as a Scot married to an American and living in Minnesota I find myself remarking to my wife (after putting on a crash helmet) that Americans sometimes seem to struggle to differentiate between “need” and “want”.
I suspect it often wasn’t the age, but many of the older cars had been used very hard and basically beaten on by dozens of drivers.
In North America, larger vehicles (cars then, SUVs now) are ubiquitous. In the rest of the world they are not.
Big vehicles are common because distances are longer, roads are bigger, and by far, most importantly, motor fuel is relatively cheap. Saudi Arabia also had many large, American, BOF cars and trucks when I was there decades ago, courtesy of the USAF.
Since “big” is commonplace, and parts and service are plentiful, it’s easier for US law enforcement to use big vehicles.
And while I’m among those who enjoy taking shots at “American excess”, if the rest of the world had access to lower cost fuel and/or a tax system that does not penalize people who drive larger engine displacement vehicles, you can bet that use of larger vehicles overseas would be much more commonplace—people want BIG!
Undoubtedly if the UK was LHD and had fuel that cost even as “little” as $5.50 a gallon there would be a hell of a lot more “Yank Tanks” around. There are already a surprising number of Hummers, Escalades and Ram 1500s on UK roads.
It’s important to remember the suitability of infrastructure though. I remember reading an article on CC about a Vauxhall engineering bigwig who took visiting GM executives on a blast down country roads near the factory to convince them that their assumption everyone automatically wants “big” isn’t always correct. My parents had a Chevy Malibu sized car and occasionally found it impractically large in their village.
In the police context I have read of US cops complaining that nothing short of a Crown Vic would do, but never heard of a UK cop suggesting their Focus isn’t up to the job. It’s different for traffic cops who have things like Volvo V70s and BMW 5 Series.
Disclosure – we have a 4.6 Crown Vic and a 3.7 Mazda CX9. Wife “needs” 7 seats and AWD. I “need” a two grand car I can work on easily. And front bench seat cos Chuck Berry.
That’s a good point, I’m not trying to take “shots” at anyone or any police people, just looking at the differing theories in place (when it pencils out I’d bet the Ford Explorer EcoBoosts probably use more $3.50 California gasoline than a Focus uses $7 UK gasoline), but you are correct that the UK does use Focuses and Astras and similar, France uses all manner of small Peugeots and Renaults etc for in-town use, and Germany is all over the map, when I was a little kid our village had a VW Bug which eventually was upgraded to an Audi 80 (4000). At the same time over here I think it was Dodge Monacos and Chevy Caprices. Presumably those Focuses are equipped with everything an officer needs to do their job too, but I don’t think it’d ever even be considered in any municipality over here, including dense cities with plenty of small streets as certainly exist on the east coast. It’s not like those cars get into freeway chases (and really, a Crown Vic isn’t exactly an athletic or speedy vehicle anyway compared to many civilian vehicles, a Focus would seem to be vastly nimbler and likely quicker). And yes, the “motorway” and “autobahn” police use larger vehicles, often faster turbodiesels and sometimes even vans, but almost always wagons as the cargo area is jampacked with gear to assist in accidents, weaponry as needed, and traffic management stuff. It just seems that a city officer in a suburban environment would have little real need for a large and inefficient vehicle. It was interesting to see Scoutdude’s note about Smart cars and Volts in NYC as well, one wouldn’t think that they’d be even remotely engineered to handle police duty.
I think those Smarts and Volts are used mainly for officers that are on crowd control duty or something similar where it is just to get them to the assignment where there are other officers. In the case of that picture of the Smart it was parked near Times Square and there were lots of traditional police cars near by as well as the SWAT armored vehicle.
The one I left out a C-Max.
And just because it is a non-Police car, Police car doesn’t mean they aren’t equipping them for officer safety as the C-Max pictured above appeared to have some sort of ballistic protection added to the outside of the door.
When I was a kid I had a Dinky (IIRC) VW Bug with German Polizei markings. Seemed odd back then, Jim; nice to know it was real.
I agree with the other Jim in that a lot of it is probably tradition and resistance to change. However the other part is that is was the only thing available until recently.
Once FWDs were offered with a police package they often just weren’t up to the task of LEO use and the lower repair costs and longer service life sent many depts back to RWD cars after one try with the FWD vehicles.
Regarding the Hybrid Fusions used in NYC I believe that is the main reason that they existed, NYC started using them before Ford introduced the Hybrid Responder. Before there was an official police packages the companies didn’t make push bars for a Fusion so those early NYC Fusions have rather crude push bars that look like they gave someone a welder and some tubing and said make a push bar.
Note NYC has also used Volts and Smart cars.
Smart
Jim; two obvious answers:
1. Same reason other Americans drive big cars/trucks. And Europeans not.
2. Police unions. If they can get their officers $200+k per year in lots of cities, they’re certainly not going to let their members drive wimpy little cars.
A very enjoyable read, with some surprises for me. I was rooting for the Fairmont to have held up better, and somehow feel bad that it didn’t give a good account of itself. But cheered that Crown Vic ranked high!
There were a few 1979 Fairmonts in our Federal law enforcement fleet that were actually quite good. Police package, 302 Windsor V-8 and special Michelin radials. Very nimble, light and handled well, especially compared to the lumbering big LTD’s in the fleet. Surprisingly quick as well and would actual out accelerate the 460 equipped LTD’s to 30 mph or so.
Can’t say much about their long term reliability, as all our cars were surplused at 70,000 miles or 4 years, GSA policy at the time. They didn’t get particularly hard use and all made it to the end without too many issues.
According to the brochure I found the Police package was not available with the 2.3l 4cyl so I’m betting that the one Jim drove as a standard civilian model. Of course with a gov’t order they would probably build it anyway they wanted it.
College campus police and most military bases probably didn’t need anything above a 4 banger engine…
Thanks. I saw where the 2.3 was offered in the 81 and up police models so I may have missed the year of ours. They had the police package as it came with the upgraded suspension, alternator and electrical system, and brakes.
I’m sure if the federal gov’t ordered enough of them Ford would have more than happy to do a VSO with the 2.3 and the rest of the Police equipment.
I had a 81 Fairmont Futura and a 1983-ish or so, Fox-body Cougar to spend the year with in Colorado, on the same routes. I can attest that the later Fox bodies were better than the early ones. The best of these were the LTD LX sedans and wagons. Sweet.
I’d love to have one of them again.
Back in the day a friend was a Ford salesman and drove a bright metallic red with white interior Fairmont demonstrator. I thought it was a really sharp sporty handy size looking car. It may have had a 302 and 4 speed…
I was stationed in southern Italty in the early 90s. We drove a plethora of Italian products – Fiat Panorama 900D, Fiat Ducato diesel 5MT (non, turbo, column shift), Fiat Panorama (car based pickups), and Piaggio Apes.
We also had a selction of suplus vehicles from other military groups in Germany for a while. S-10 Blazer, diesel Vanagon crew cab trucks, Mazda B series trucks with very HD suspensions, and a full sized Chevy van.
After a while the power that were decided we would rent vehicles so we began driving brand new European compacts with door magnets.That was interesting being able to test drive so many new cars as we were normally driving clapped out Italian cars in our personal time.
Forgot to mention as Navy Security Police, we were often rushing around the city like idiots. As a bunch of 20-somethings some of the group would speed test these vehicles. How fast could you get across town?
A bunch of young American males speeding around in Piaggio Ape’s!! The mind boggles. Did any get rolled?
In the purchase of police cars, “Low Bid” was and still is a reality. Bid specifications were how astute fleet managers could weed out the bottom feeders. If the department had its own testing program, so much the better because it would not be dependent on manufacturers’ written specifications and claims. “Heavy Duty,” “HIgh Performance” and the like could mean anything. Actual tested performance could be called into play if the data were available.
Fortunately, the departments I worked for either specified the California Highway Patrol test results in the bid specificaitons or tacked on their orders directly to the CHP’s. This didn’t prevent the infamous 1980 Dodge St. Regis, though; the bid specs for that year were lowered to what was on the market. Whatever else was out there was probably worse. In 1979 one neighboring department whose City Manager’s office wrote the bid specs got a low bid submission from a Ford dealer for the Ford Granada with a Six and a “heavy duty” package…still a civilian-rated passenger car…but saner heads prevailed and they wound up with the Dodge Aspen with the full Chrysler A38 police package and 318 V8.
As for low-powered urban police cars, besides New York City, San Francisco did the same for many years. In the early 1960s their patrol cars were all Fords (there was a friendly link-up to a local Ford dealer) with Sixes.
Ford did offer a large number of police packages at that time. Here is a page from the 1970 Police and Emergency Vehicles brochure listing the various powertrain packages and their suggested uses. From Deputy to Interceptor, a performance level for every use and budget.
Interesting that you could get police packages on the Custom, Custom 500, or Galaxie 500. I’m mildly surprised you could get them all the way up to the Galaxie 500.
At first glance, it may seem odd that police packages were available on the Galaxie 500 two-door hardtop. That was the only way the Galaxie 500 came as a two-door, though, so if you were going to offer these packages on Galaxie 500s, and wanted to make a two-door available, it makes sense. In addition, this was the year Ford dropped the full-size two-door pillared sedan. To the extent that there was demand for two-door police vehicles, the Galaxie 500 hardtop was the cheapest remaining full-size Ford two-door.
Even if they only offered the 2dr hardtop to civilians as a Galaxie 500, there is no reason Ford couldn’t have dressed one in a lesser trim for police package cars only if they really wanted to.
I assume that the reason they offered all the way up to the Galaxie 500 was for the Police Chief or Sheriff, in a well funded dept, to use as their take home car. I could maybe see a Galaxie trim level for unmarked or under cover use.
That would be S and C Ford on Market Street. Been gone about 10 years now.
When I was on the Auxiliary Security Force, at NAS Corpus Christi in 2000-2001 we had a Lumina, which was horrible and a Crown Victoria which I found more cramped than expected. The vehicles everyone wanted were the Ford Expeditions.
The Crown Vics and Lincolns were offered with 4″ longer wheelbases which I believe made the rear doors 4″ longer and rear space inside bigger… or maybe it was split between front and rear,,,
The stretched Panthers were 6″ longer than the standard version and yes all of it went to the back seat room. Note the Town Car had 4″ more than the Crown Vic yet still got a 6″ stretch. So yes they made 4 different length frames and the crazy part of it was that they first did it in the short 2002 model year before introducing a new frame for 2003. They also cheeped out by using the same rear window and putting in a filler panel for that one year only.
The legitimate police spec Matadors seemed higher regarded, the 401 models reportedly were about as fast as the 440 mopars and actually had excellent handling as well(AMC really seemed to learn from their Trans Am racing foray). I believe the LAPD cars were actually equipped with manual steering, crazy as that sounds
It’s great bookends that the top of the good was the LTD and the bottom of the ugly was the Fairmont. Just goes to show what a difference a good drivetrain and chassis tuning makes.
When I was in Vietnam, the MP’s drove Ford ‘Jeeps’ with IRS swing axles in the rear that you didn’t corner hard with because they rode up to a narrow track width and tipped over on corners… don’t think they were ever sold to the USA public, even as war surplus… generally they were to be driven at 20 MPH max ‘convoy speeds’… they had a 4 banger and top speed of 55 MPH… but usually started misfiring at 45 MPH unless freshly re-tuned… I was in Communications and drove a light grey 1960’s Dodge pickup with utilities boxes and Slant 6 before the 70’s detune. The Navy left them to us in the Army. They would hit about 90 MPH. If the MPs came after us in their ‘Jeeps’ we went out to limited access Highway 1 and left them in the dust, then came back in at another access point and returned on the back roads. We also had a big red sign on the front that read Emergency Communications Repair and we just breezed through Check Points with a quick wave…
I have a 2004 Ford Crown Vic P4 Deluxe civilian car… it costs me more in repairs yearly than I paid for it… it’s a big car and reminds me of the ’57 Olds 98 Starfire I drove as a teenager… it’s surprisingly good on gas, 25 – 30 MPG on the Freeway… even though I sometimes set the cruise control at 105 MPH out in the hinterlands… Ford stopped selling them in USA in 2011 because didn’t want to do 2012 USA Govt. requirements, but units made in late 2011 were sold in Saudi Arabia as 2012’s because they love big American cars… And some police dept.s socked away a cache of 2011’s for later use… While Chevy put cops in Suburbans…
I had an ’81 KCar station wagon that I bought because of the 2.6L Mitsubishi SOHC ‘hemi’ engine… prolly put less than a 100 miles on it… when the scrap yard came to tow it out of the garage it broke completely in half…
I drove a few M151 MUTTs during my time too – deathly scary…especially without a roll cage.
You forgot to mention the 1977 Ford Maverick police vehicles. They were ubiquitous around army posts well into the 1980s.
Yep, the Amy seemed to like their Mavericks – well, the contracting folks did – as Rob mentioned above, don’t think the MPs cared for them.
We never had Mavericks in USAF that I came across.
Agreed, the Reliant/Aries combo did not make for a good police car offering. Although my 2.2 litre Reliant could do 160 kms/hr when pushed (just that one time). I’d get a racing ticket for doing that today, and a 7 day suspension and vehicle impound.
I would have thought that the 73-74 Plymouth Furies were good police cars, and 1977-84 Chev Impalas. I think one of the worst I’ve seen were the mid ’90s Chev whale shaped sedans.
It is intriguing that I see unmarked police vehicles in all sorts of configurations now: SUVs, pickup trucks, many different models of cars. Police here have finally figured out that unmarked cars should not be immediately recognizable.
Great article. Surprised the Volarespens made your good list.
Police loved the 1990’s whale shaped Chevies with 260 netHP V8’s…
Of course, my Crown Vic LX is also whale shaped… helps with wind resistance…
One reason Chrysler products didn’t do well for some gov. work and police use is all the idling. Trans doesn’t circulate fluid in park. You will note that many Chrysler products require that the trans oil level be checked with the engine running and the trans in neutral. Fluid level check in park is not accurate. We had lots of transmission failures in our Dodge pickups that we used by field personnel. Kind of like cop cars, start it in the morning and run it all day until you return to the barn. The other faults we found with the excessive idling was very many idler pulley and tensioner failures at 3-4 years of use. For some fleets the only solution was to charge the individual offices for the complete cost of owning and operating a vehicle.
The fact your Volare squad was the BEST Chrysler product really says something as the Volare/Aspen twins were terrible cars.
When I was going to GMI in Flint mid 1960’s where they made Buicks, the police drove full size Buicks in several colors such as red, green, brown, and yellow…
The Buick factory was about 3 miles long and raw materials went in one end and the sides and new Buicks drove out of the other end…
The home city of Oldsmobile – Lansing, Michigan – used Oldsmobile police cars for several years.
I’m much more of an Olds fan than a Buick fan, if I’d known, I would have slid over there and checked them out… did you live there?
On wandering Sunday drives I stumbled across other things in the area such as an amusement park in a woods north of Flint, abandoned JFK Estates subdivision, Dort Mall (never seen a Mall before), and Frankenmuth…
No, I’ve never lived in Lansing. I’ve just seen photos of them in various books about Oldsmobile. I have been to Dearborn and Detroit (most recently in 2016, when we visited Greenfield Village and the Ford Rouge Factory).
The thing that struck me most about the Flint Buick police cars was the various colors used instead of just black/white units of the day… I suppose the varied colors were part of advertising Buicks… and/or to make them easier to sell off used…
I’m in the Toledo, Ohio area 100 miles south of Flint… we currently make Jeep Wranglers and Jeep Gladiator pickups… GM 8 and 10 speed transmissions… various metal stampings for Chrysler (torque converter, etc.)… some Ford parts… Johnson Controls auto batteries (rebranded)…