TOP 10 POLICE CARS

POLICE CARS

If you’re a petrolhead who fancies being a traffic cop, some gigs are better than others.

1. ROVER P6

THESE DAYS any young copper can afford a second-hand Beemer and any young bandit can probably afford a new one, but the Rover P6 police car would have been the most sophisticated, fastest and most expensive vehicle most of its occupants had ever ridden in. Constables and crims alike were working class lads who could barely aspire to a used Ford Anglia when the first one of these arrived in ’64. Then, when the V8 came along and many forces adopted it for motorway work, it meant there was even less that could outrun the boys in blue.

2.ESCORT COSWORTH

REMEMBER TWOCKING? Taking Without Consent was the euphemism devised to describe the kinds of thefts perpetrated by joyriders: no intention of stealing for sale or profit, just for mayhem and giggles. Humberside Police started a kind of arms race which now looks a spectacularly daft idea – hey, the cops are going to race us in a Cossie! Let’s nick something proper fast! – by buying and kitting out out one of these mental Escorts to act as a ‘deterrent’. Later, they did a similar thing with an Impreza STi. Petrolhead police? There are plenty of them out there, you know.

3.FORD CROWN VICTORIA

HERE’S AN almost-impossible challenge: watch an American cop show, or legal drama, or HBO mini-series about the Mafia or the drug trade made any time in the last 20 years. Then find an episode without one of these. The Crown Vic sounds like an East End pub but must be the most numerous police model ever produced. In P71 or Police Interceptor form, you got slightly taller, stiffer suspension, a 250bhp 4.6-litre OHC V8 and a 4-spd o/d autobox. When Ford announced its replacement by the Taurus, police departments scrambled to stockpile the last ones.

4. ROVER SD1

IT HAD GOOD looks, road presence and that V8, but talk to some traffic cops who had to use them and you hear tales of crappy build quality and frequent let-downs. Still, it was quick enough to make the famous ‘liver run’ in 1987, a mercy dash from the M11 to Cromwell Hospital in South Kensington with a donor organ: 27 miles into central London in under 30 minutes. The patient lived. Forces stockpiled them when the model was withdrawn, but some suggest this had less to do with love and more to do with BL giving away unsellable cars at rock-bottom prices.

5.VAUXHALL SENATOR B

HERE’S THE SD1’s spiritual successor. Given a choice between a Rover 800 and one of these, most forces chose the latter. It offered rear-wheel drive and a heritage of decent build quality and long life, plus a lot of performance: a 3-litre 24v manual one of these would have shown even a twin plenum Vitesse a clean pair of heels. Like the SD1, constabularies such as Leicester and Durham stockpiled them when replacement by the Omega was announced, guaranteeing uneasy glances in the rear view mirror for drivers on the M1 and A1M right through the 1990s.

6. WOLSELEY 18/85

THE 1946 Wolseley was packed with features we’d only expect on a 1970s car: OHV straight six, four-speed synchro ‘box, hydraulic brakes, adjustable steering column (reach and rake), fog lamps, anti-dazzle visors, town and country horns, interior lights turned on by opening a door and built-in hydraulic jacks. It made coppers proud to use it because it did everything well and inspired respect. Contrast that with the electric Mitsubishi i-Miev some police forces have adopted. The doors are so thin they can hear people laughing as they drive past.

7. ANYTHING OWNED BY THE DUBAI POLICE FORCE

IMAGINE RUNNING the police fleet in Dubai. You have a look at your budget, count the zeros again, shake your head and you pick up the phone. Having ordered one of each of the most exciting supercars currently on sale, you give the heads up to the local paint shop. ‘I need you to do a Veyron, an Aston One-77, an Aventador, a McLaren, a Ferrari FF, an Audi R8, a couple of bonkers AMG Mercs, two Yankee muscle cars, a Bentley and a Hummer. Yup, I’ve ordered them in white, so can you add the usual green bits and make them look like those 1980s spearmint chews? Pacers, was that the name? Nice one.’

8. ITALIAN POLICE LAMBORGHINIS

DUBAI’S police’s supercars are mainly used for cruising the tourist areas and raising the prestige of the place. The Italian ones, a very small number of Lambos donated by the famous firm, are actually used at high speeds on the Autostradas for reaching the scenes of accidents (each one carries a defibrillator), delivering donor organs and yes, chasing the odd loony who tries some gold standard naughty driving. Sadly, a Gallardo was totalled by a police driver in 2009, on his way back from addressing a student audience on road safety. Mamma mia!

9. 1974 DODGE MONACO

‘IT’S GOT A cop motor, a 440-cubicinch plant. It’s got cop tires, cop suspension, cop shocks. It’s the model made before catalytic converters so it’ll run good on regular gas.’ A reluctant Joliet Jake agrees, after tossing the fag lighter out of the window, that it can be the new Bluesmobile. Dan Akroyd, who played Elwood Blues, co-wrote the script for The Blues Brothers and chose the ’74 Dodge Monaco because it was supposedly the fastest police car of the era. But it looked the part too – you can see its anonymous, suitcase-like outline in heaps of old cop movies.

10. BMC J4 BLACK MARIA

THE TRADITIONAL black or dark blue van has been absent from Britain’s streets for many years, though it’s difficult to imagine old news footage from the Brixton riots or sundry bits of football hooliganism without them. There’s one of these in Withnail and I when the pair are pulled over on the M1 in their battered Jag. There’s even one on the cover of the Beatles’ Abbey Road, looking at us between Ringo and John. Various vans played the role of Black Maria over the years, but we like the J4 for its inherent crapness: it looked timid and slow, and it was.