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A polica friend told me the new Skoda Octavia VRS cars they had needed chipping by Skoda to get them to work. The thrashing they got from the police use to put them in limp home mode fairly frequently
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I used to work for
www.tssltd.co.uk/
installing cctv into police cars/fire engines etc.
and when you talk to the police mechanics they really care about the cars there working on. when being serviced/inspected all the wheels come off for re-balancing etc etc...there gone over with a fine tooth combe.
we often would see S70 volvos of course fitted with an extra passenger side mirror, and even though they might be the d5 model they would come without leather or a radio...but the radio speakers!!! I would remove one of the speakers and mount a rotator and rear mounted cctv into the hole...
taking the carpets etc out of a car with only 20miles on the clock was interesting..
once found a package of....lets say it looked like dried brocolli tucked into the back seats.. someone must have put it there when they where pulled over....interesting phone call to the officer/driver in question about items found....hahaha....
SOME of the police cars are fitted with black boxes to record the cars driven history, found out about a skoda VRS involed in a high speed run along an unmade road.
it recorded a err high speed, then a higher one, then 0....driver said he hit a hole went airborn and landed....holing the sump.....sump fixed back on the road again....
paul.
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There is a ex police car up here used as a taxi been in it still has holes in dash and side driver says it's quick for a astra diesel but not that i would want one the volvos or the vectras maybe then again if driven over kerbs will these last!!
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As I understand it the vast majority of police cars on the road are bog standard in terms of engine and performance. If they need something quicker, they buy a quicker car.
Most police registered(patrol/traffic) vehicles are MOT exempt due to higher servicing regimes.
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"It's got a cop motor, a four hundred and forty cubic inch plant, it's got cop tires, cop suspension, cop shocks, it was a model made before catalytic converters so it'll run good on regular gas ..."
In the US, police 'pursuit' cars have a mythology about them. The 1969 Dodge Polara Pursuit had a 440cui / 7.2 litre V8 with quad-barrel carb, giving 305bhp (SAE net) and 400lb-ft of torque. In police testing it hit 60mph in 6.3 seconds and covered 1/4 mile in 14.3 seconds (at over 99 mph), with a top speed of 135mph.
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> The 1969 Dodge Polara Pursuit
with suspension designed by Harland and Wolfe, and the handling characteristics of the Titanic.
Tho, I have to confess, I nearly recently bought a Ford Crown Victoria.
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I understood that uk cop cars were run of the mill standard spec cars, but with uprated electrics for all the gear, but offered at much cheaper prices to the police.
Edited by Altea Ego on 12/01/2010 at 17:05
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Around my part of the world the pandas are base model Foci with the smallest diesel engine available.
Traffic cars are BMW 5 series estates and a couple of X5's. They appear to be 3.0d engined vehicles with cloth seats (leather wouldn't last long!).
They are phasing out the Volvo S60 models which in are all T5 models, again with cloth seats and manual A/C (no climate etc.). This seems to be a special Police Spec model as there is no production model with such poor spec!
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I thought most traffic cars were modified to allow the engine to run without the key, so tha the engine would keep the blue lights going, but would cut out if the clutch was depressed (e.g. if someone tried to nick it)
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Don't think anyone's mentioned window glass.
There was a rash of so-called 'brick the squaddie' cases in the North East in the early 1990s in which yobs threw bricks at police cars.
This led to forces speccing non-shatterable 'glass' for the side windows.
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"Window glass" is just the start of it here in the Basque Country: tinyurl.com/y8d5akd Owing to the still unresolved political "situation", the current range of cars used by the Ertzaintza - previous model Passat 4Motion with far from bog-standard engine! - have runflat tyres and are bomb and bullet proof. Aircon is standard as the windows - blackened - don't open.
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Autocar had an article about the police last week and I quote:-
?The BMW 530d that the Met uses is largely in standard showroom specification mechanically, although it does come with the highest grade of brake pads offered by BMW. Contrary to popular belief, the engine and suspension are not tweaked.?
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Yes, it's known as "runlock" and is activated by a button on the dash.
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Many people who buy ex-police cars, particularly traffic cars, mention they feel much quicker than other examples of the same car they've driven. I suspect this is down to lots of "exercise" and meticulous maintenance. The engine is probably just producing what it should, but most other examples at a few years and 100,000+ miles won't be.
A friend bought an ex Thames Valley Police Rover 827 from auction a while back. It had done 170,000 miles and was cosmetically tatty, but you could have eaten your lunch off the engine, or any of the other oily bits. It was in outstanding mechanical condition. Ran beautifully and went like something off a shovel. We wondered if it had been tinkered with, but I suspect it was just very loose and impeccably maintained. It was a complete bargain for the couple of grand he gave for it. He spent another £700 or so sorting the cosmetics out, mostly with breakers yard bits (dash was wrecked / incomplete from the radio gear removal, seats knackered, headlining baggy after lights removal etc), and it became a very nice car for very little outlay. Gave him another 40k of fast, reliable service until it was run over by an artic while parked up.
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Remember reading somewhere (might have been the DT) an article on one force's traffic police some years back, and it said they fitted harder dampers to the Omegas / Senators of that time, but that was the only performance mod.
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Armed Response Vehicles (ARVs) have uprated dampers to cope with the extra weight of the armour plating to the doors.
Forces in the North East use large liveried estate cars which could easily be mistaken for a traffic patrol.
I've come across an ARV doing scene preservation at a road traffic collision.
I get the impression it's no longer considered an effective use of resources to have armed officers sitting around, doing nowt, so they are obliged to muck in, often with traffic.
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Up here in Morley nr Leeds there is a police training centre were they often use those armoured volvo police cars and the white van they carry prisoners in they regular up and down the busy road A650 and we get the police helicopter above looks ace if it's your first time seen it regular a month back.
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In Strathclyde the armed response vehicles ar 4x4s, eother Shoguns or Landcruisers and I think there is a couple of Galaxies as well.
But wasn't aware they were "proofed" in any way other than obviously lockable storage inside?
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...But wasn't aware they were "proofed" in any way other than obviously lockable storage inside?...
A firearms officer told me they sometimes need to crouch behind one of the doors, which if left as standard wouldn't offer any meaningful protection.
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I was an ARV Officer for a good number of years. Standard Police Omega/Volvo apart from the gunbox.
When not armed up, we did the same reponse/traffic work as everyone else.
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It must though mlc, have been so tempting to do the " feelin' lucky punk? " thing...?
;-)
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When I was receiving "Rules of engagement" training from a MOD police Sergeant I was told, "If you shoot someone who is not shooting at you or your pal, you will have to explain why to a judge". Our main problem in those days were peace protesters, who for some reason kept well away from the areas guarded by armed navy personnel.
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I bought an ex RUC 2.8i Mk3 Granada, it was allegedly a Ghia, but had plain cloth seating, wind up windows and a limited slip diff, went like a rocket and was quicker than my 2.8i Capri, both in acceleration and top speed.
Dunno if it was a rapid response car, but it went REALLY well for a fat granny!
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The BMW 5 series estate that was pulling into my local Tesco in Co Durham last was standard fit - off-side head light not working. mentioned it to driver who was unaware, but nice chap who told me he would have to pop back for a new one.
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