Much of it was shot in Cleveland, right?
If they were Cleveland PD then my point is made. 
I just got back from a second viewing of the movie, and I was thinking of this discussion during this scene.
Fury makes a hard turn, but not onto a side street - he’s at a four-way intersection when he does it. The police cars are right on his tail, and don’t make the turn. There’s about a three beat pause in the action. Fury looks back and sees that they’re gone, looks up at the HUD on his windshield to try to contact Maria Hill, and then notices that there’s someone standing in the middle of the next intersection. The Winter Soldier isn’t right there when he turns the corner, he’s at least a full city block away - far enough away that Fury’s driving for a few seconds before he even notices that there’s a guy in the middle of the street with a grenade launcher. If the Winter Soldier had been pacing the chase on a parallel street on a motorcycle, there’s plenty of time for him to have reached the next intersection before Fury and ditch the bike.
Also, something I noticed in the credits: the narrator at the Captain America exhibit at the museum was Gary Sinise!
So my biggest complaint with the Marvel Universe, as finally demonstrated in this movie? S.H.I.E.L.D. has been around for over 50 years, and nobody realized the acronym was SHIELD?
Agent Phil Coulson: I’m Agent Phil Coulson with the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division.
Virginia ‘Pepper’ Potts: That’s quite a mouthful.
Agent Phil Coulson: I know. We’re working on it.
I think that was an example of Coulson’s puckish sense of humor. Personally, I wonder how the super-secret organization of MIB of the Marvelverse maintained their cover with a 42-story office building headquarters right on the Potomac.
Yeah, the latest episode of Agents of SHIELD kinda skewered the idea that the acronym was a coincidence. Coulson said that he swore an oath to be a shield between extraordinary threats and the innocent people of the world.
Also, when talking with civilians, spelling out the whole thing is a good bit of misdirection. Anyone not involved with metahuman defense or superscience containment will zone out half-way through the introduction.
“I’m with the Strategic Homeland Blah Blah Blah (zzzzzzzz snort)”
Who were you talking with? Some government drone from one of the alphabet soup agencies? Okay.
In the first episode of AoS, Coulson asked Ward “You are an agent of the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division. What does that mean to you?”
“That someone really wanted our initials to spell SHIELD?”
I’m with DrFidelius here - Coulson is spelling out the name with Pepper because he thinks Pepper is a muggle. The best way to get info is to just rattle the whole damn thing off, and see what happens:
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you rattle off the spiel and they respond something like Pepper or DrFidelius’ example “wow, that’s a long title.” They’re either a muggle for real, or they’re really good at misdirection.
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they work out that the acronym is SHIELD, and either they’re really good with words, really smart, or they’re already part of the world that knows about SHIELD.
Between casing the person and having their background info available, most times it should be pretty easy to tell which they are from either category.
Presumably when Coulson (finally) got into actual contact with Tony, he spelled out the whole deal to explain the concept and attempt Fury’s plan to recruit Tony into the Avengers Intiative (Tony failed the stability exams and ended up on “consultant” status, which I find vastly amusing).
Between the bits with Pepper in the Iron Mans, and the bit with Agent Ward in the SHIELD tv series, I’m leaning towards Ward’s interpretation. Now I’m just waiting to see SWORD.
Yes, quite a bit of TWS was filmed in Cleveland. Fury’s car was surrounded and shot up near the Board of Education building. The subsequent chase with Fury and the police cars was on Euclid Avenue approaching Public Square (if you look carefully you can see the Soldiers and Sailors Monument getting bigger and smaller and then bigger again at the end of the street in the distance: http://www.soldiersandsailors.com/images/SSM.jpg). Cap and Natasha were on the escalator at Tower City, a big indoor mall downtown, when they kissed. The secret hideout and dam where they find the not-dead but still-recovering Fury is in Cleveland Heights, I believe. The Winter Soldier yanks the SHIELD turncoat out of their car on the Shoreway; the street battle with the bus resulting in Cap’s and the others’ capture was on West Third Street, right next to the Justice Center. There are other spots I can’t recall off the top of my head.
I loved that line.
And Abigail Brand? She’s a Joss creation, so it would be an easy fit.
Nice try ret-conning SHIELD not looking like doofuses, but I’ve always seen the bits in Iron Man played as “oh, hey, we just noticed this…”
Tony Stark: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, the guy from the…
Agent Phil Coulson: Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division.
Tony Stark: Whew! God, you really need a new name for that.
Agent Phil Coulson: Yeah, I hear that a lot.
and
Virginia ‘Pepper’ Potts: Agent Coulson, I just wanted to say thank you very much for all of your help.
Agent Phil Coulson: That’s what we do. You’ll be hearing from us.
Virginia ‘Pepper’ Potts: From the Strategic Homeland…
Agent Phil Coulson: [interrupting] Just call us SHIELD.
The “Agent Carter” One-Shot established they were already calling it SHIELD back in 1946, when Howard Stark called Carter’s boss and told him “Tell her she’ll be running SHIELD, with me.” That’s the first chronological mention of the name. Maybe her new series will show exactly how they came up with it.
Yeah, it’s not a matter of SHIELD being doofuses; it’s about Coulson, specifically, being a doofus. Or at least, looking like one.
All part of the master plan…
And again, the Agent Carter one-shot was made well AFTER Iron Man…
Remember, we now know a lot more about Coulson’s personality than we did back in Iron Man 1.
How about the post-credits scene in Iron Man, when Samuel L. Jackson said “[I’m] Nick Fury, director of SHIELD.” Are you claiming that Coulson called him up a few hours before and said, “Hey, Director Fury, guess what, our initials spell out SHIELD! Isn’t that cool?”
The reveal was written to be a neat event to give long time comic readers goosebumps - I know it did for me. If you’re going to claim that a 60 second scene between a mild mannered agent and a slightly ditzy personal assistant is forever written in stone, with no possible reinterpretations based on later movies, that’s your right.
Yep! He & Nick are tight like that.
I haven’t seen the one-shot yet but this is interesting. Did people use the phrase “homeland” then like we do now? Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division is supposed to evoke “Homeland security,” imo, which seems post 9/11ish.