"Police Cars" Topic

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In the USA the police often use the same cars from coast to coast. There are often only one or two vehicles specifically marketed as police cars so their choices are often limited for regular police vehicles. Here are a couple police vehicles by Matchbox and I have several of both.

Police car body styles often don't change much year over year, but the cars themselves often don't last in service for more than a few years. So for miniature purposed you can often keep the same car in service for ten years or more.

Mike Bunkermeister Creek
Bunker Talk blog

Very interesting, do the manufacturers actually make police specific models, e.g better brakes,better engine? They used to here in Oz, but we don't have car industry any more. Now our forces drive all sorts.

Yes, the police package typically is a standard car with larger radiator for better cooling, oil cooler, larger brake pads, heavier suspension and other similar features related to handling and engine durability.
Police cars idle a lot, parked with the lights on, radio broadcasting, so they overhead and the electrical gets heavy use. So they often also have larger batteries and heavy charging system.
The Ford Crown Victoria was a major vehicle for many years, Chevrolet essentially went out of the police market for about a decade.
Now there are a lot more kinds of vehicles, with South Pasadena Police Department using an all Tesla fleet.
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Thanks for reading korsun0.

Mike

When I first joined the police, there were 4 car manufacturers in Australia. Ford and Holden made V8s, Toyota and Mitsubishi didn't. Because of where factories were built, my state police force drove v8 Holden Commodores, and used 4-cylinder turbo Magnas from Mitsubishi as plain cars (they flew!). The V8s we drove had a "police pack" which was the same high peformance pack put on limited edition road cars sold by factory racing companies. Like you say, better brakes and suspension, more powerful motor with better cooling and a heavy duty transmission. They were called pursuit vehicles and back then we used to get in pursuits regularly and these cars pulled 220km/h easy.

As the car companies moved out of Australia we gradually ended up with 6 cylinder sedans and/or paddy wagons that were pretty much standard vehicles with better brake pads and may be a dual battery. One of my vehicles when I had my own station had three batteries because I ran 8 radio sets; one battery was for simply starting the vehicle, one was for running the radios and one battery was for the usual vehicle electronics. That was a special build and a hefty car (actually saved my life due to reinforcing on the front).

Now with no vehicle manufacturers all sorts of vehicles are used. Geography rules out EV a lot, but we now have Toyota, Ford, VW cars and some of them couldn't pull the skin off a custard. Of course these days no pursuits are expected and cost of equipping and resale value are important so they are different colours and have very few extra parts in the vehicle. I'm glad I retire in two years….

The police posts are interesting, looking forward to what you come up with next.

Some packages come without a center console to make more room for onboard computers, better seat cover material, blackout packages, perimeter alarms, as well as other options that aren't specific to engines/systems that deal solely with vehicle performance.

The Ford Crown Victoria was the police car supreme in US/Canada, but sadly Ford stopped making them – now most police forces at least here are using a combo of Dodge Chargers (nice pursuit vehicles but a little cramped) and SUVs