Substantial, as well as having a large functional back seat and rear doors, for transporting suspects and the like.
Maybe a different season had a different intro, cause I also thought they had a clip of a gunboat catching a little air (And no Im not conflating Bullitt)
Its not just that the police cars are boats, its that the crooks getaway cars are also.
MST3K: “This makes Driving Miss Daisy look like Bullitt”…well maybe Mitchell and the guy chasing him had it right. “Speeds approaching 25 MPH!!”…any faster and they’d spin off the hill!
Everyone thinks that handling and power are the key requirements of a cop car. But cop cars very rarely get into high speed chases on twisty roads. Much more important is durability, ease of driving, large back seat for arestees, strong bumpers, a large trunk for equipment, etc. Lots of towns and cities have moved to SUVs for police vehicles.
That said, none of the large domestic cars available in the 60’s and 70’s could handle worth a damn. Most had sold axles with leaf springs, terrible weight distribution, sloppy steering, were heavy, and most of all they ran around on skinny, small bias-ply tires. The first domestic car with radial tires was the 1970 Lincoln Continental. Cars with big powerful engines were basically good at converting gasoline into burning rubber and noise, and weren’t particularly fast by today’s standards.
Most ‘sporty’ cars back then were just downsized sedans. Nothing special in terms of handling equipment or suspension, other than stiffer springs sometimes.
Ok, this is the best one yet. Apparently Bronson is driving Christine because of the way the car heals, he goes out of his way to hilariously crash through shit, and its awfully nice of the guy on the motorcycle to stay slow enough for Bronson to keep up.
They must have gone through ten of these cars for this scene alone.
Yeah.
I’ve pointed this out in endless motorhead threads, but a 2015 Nissan Murano family wagon can out-accelerate, out-turn, and out-brake any late 60’s muscle car like a Camaro, 442, Mustang, or Charger.
While carrying 6 kids in car seats, 2 dogs, a driver & helper, and all 17 cupholders filled w sodas. Plus 3 built-in TVs. With leather seats, surround sound, air conditioning, and satellite radio plus a USB port for iTunes / etc. While making 5% as much pollution per mile and getting 4x the gas mileage.
1960s cars are simply pitiful. And I say that as somebody who learned to drive on them and remembers them fondly. But they were unmitigated shite by even obsolete decade-ago modern standards.
Agreed, except for acceleration. The 2015 Murano was good for quarter mile times in the high 15’s. Even the base engine in a GTO/Roadrunner/Chevelle could deliver low 15 second times.
You should have picked an Accord or Camry. These, with the optional engines, would out accelerate all but the quickest muscle cars of the 1960s.
Yeah but can the hot seats peel the skin off your legs like an old car would?
Miami Vice - 1972 Ferrari Daytona Spyder 365 GTS/4
And if we take a small step outside of the States, we get:
Inspector Morse - 1960 Mark II Jaguar
Bergerac - 1947 Triumph Roadster
The Bridge - 977 US-spec Porsche 911S
Yeah, the Accord is my usual go-to for an example of a modern sedan that’s faster in just about every way than a typical 60’s muscle car. But the Murano makes for a more stark contrast and it’s still faster than most ‘muscle cars’.
Some muscle cars actually were pretty fast. The 400+ horsepower big block Corvettes from the 60’s could run the 1/4 mile in the mid to high 13’s, which is pretty fast. But the Corvette had independent suspension, reasonable weight distribution, and was fairly light (3300-3400 lbs).
But then look at the Chevelle SS 396, which is considered a real muscle car and a powerful one at that (360 hp). It was 500 lbs heavier than the Corvette and it had crap suspension. It did the 1/4 mile in 16.3 seconds, which is lousy by today’s standards.
The Honda Accord 2.0T will run the 1/4 mile in 14.1 seconds, and absolutely crush a Chevelle SS 396. As would the Nissan Murano, at 14.7 in its fastest version.
However… If you take that muscle car and put a set of modern wide radials on it, it’ll accelerate a lot better. Then it will destroy its rear springs, then the differential, then the transmission… Designers back then took advantage of the poor traction of bias ply tires and could design the rest of the drivetrain for lower stresses. That said, some of the muscle cars had pretty robust drivetrains, and some did not.
My Nissan Rogue can do 0-60 in 8.2 seconds, and the 1/4 mile in 16 seconds.
I’m a big Rockford fan and I always get a kick out of watching the car chases. The Firebird was marginally better than most of the cars in the series but they all pretty much cornered like boats. I’m sure James Garner preferred the performance of his ride in Grand Prix.
1976 Corvette with a fiberglass package.
But the Testarossa was real.
Watching that chase…the shocks were very soft, those things sagged like my auntie’s drawers under any half-significant cornering load. The brakes would have been shot after about half a dozen hairpins (all that boiling fluid), and the tires chocolate sludge after a few too many skids (until they hit the obligatory abandoned quarry and all that dust gets stuck to the contact patch).
In the 1980s when I worked for the city, I was told to drive an empty car back to City Hall from a recreation center. We didn’t own any buses so for transporting a carload of kids we used Ford station wagons that were about 30’ long and, like the B-52’s Chrysler, sat about 20.
Nobody thought to tell me it had power brakes. I had never been in a wagon like that. My cars were bottom of the line sedans with power nothing. Approaching a sudden red light I hit the brakes like I would in my own car - really, really hard.
The car fishtailed across three lanes. If any other cars had been on the road next to me I would have swatted them onto the sidewalk like a pinball paddle. Amazingly, the road was completely empty.
Cars back then were built for utility, not handling. Car chases along twisty roads were for movies and television, as much reality as a Bonanza episode where all the cowboys wore neatly pressed clothing.
Remember Magnum PI’s Ferrari 308 GTSi? It was so awesome it was almost a character on the show.
In real life, an Accord would spank it. 7.3s 0-60, 1/4 mile: 17.3s
This time it’s not the tire’s fault, it’s the emissions regs at the time. The thing only had 205 hp. And that was quite a lot for 1981.
If we are including P.I.s, general heroes and the like, this list is going to get a lot longer.
I only found out today Mannix was a PI and not a cop. I was wondering why when guys were shooting at him, he ran his car off a cliff and hid.
The part I liked was the 270-degree bootleg turn, with the foot brake.
Rockford was a great show, and from what I’ve heard James Garner really could drive.
I’ve read and owned a lot of 60’s magazine tests and never seen a Chevelle SS396 perform so slowly. I’m not saying it couldn’t happen, as there were outliers, but they typically ran 15.0-15.5 with typical rear end ratios. The hotter L78 396 ran 14.5-15 flat.
There may have been faster years for the Murano, but the 2015 mentioned by LSL ran 15.7 for Car and Driver, about what you’d expect with 270hp and 4000 pounds.