Heh, I think that New Middletown, a ruralish town of about 3,000 has one.
I’ve never actually seen one. I’m in Arizona. It doesn’t seem all that weird to me, but I can’t recall ever seeing one being driven.
Doesn’t it say fire chief on it?
There are plenty of those in Pa.
From CharlesW’s reply I now assume that their confusion stemmed from seeing a Fire Chief’s car rather than a Fire Chief’s SUV, as they apparently have in Vegas and some other places out West.
We won’t get started on the subject of what 17 year olds think about popular music. (Apparently everything from before about 1995 is now considered Classic Rock. Who knew?)
You know you’re old when you can say, “Remember ‘punk’?” (Sid Viscious has been dead… what? Twenty-four years?)
Jersey, PA, Deleware…seen them in all three.
Hey, SanibelMan, how’s it goin’ over in Richmond Heights/Brentwood? 
I used to live over there until a few months ago. The St. Louis Police also have SUV’s. When I lived in Carbondale, IL, their police department had a couple of big SUV’s (unmarked, with tinted windows even, pretty sneaky). I think most fairly large PD’s would have these now, for different uses. . .sometimes they’re forensics vehicles, investigative, occasionally patrol/pursuit, etc.
Also, Lizard, the Illinois State Police have bunches of Camaros that they use for highway patrol and speed traps. Go anywhere near Chicago (or even St. Louis, for that matter) on a holiday weekend and their hidden flashy lights will be coming out of the woodwork. Tons of them.
Back on topic, I’ve seen chief’s vehicles (both Crown Vics and SUVs) racing to the scene with lights flashing before, a couple of times responding to car fires on the interstate, I guess because he was closer than the nearest engine, and wanted to get the situation under control/take care of traffic, etc. Also, imagine this–there’s a building fire to which the engine responds quickly, and firefighters are getting hurt. The chief needs to get there to assess the situation and give orders. Emergency lights. I think they have the lights and everything because even though the vehicle and the person inside don’t actually fight the fire, they need to get there to give orders and make decisions when there’s a major event.
Maybe most, but certainly not all.
The volunteer FD in my home town of Kings Park, NY now has two: a car and an SUV.
Volunteer fire fighter here. Our departments newest vehicle is circa 1984. our oldest is circa 1967. And yes, we still use the oldtimer. Our department is considered one of the best equiped stations in the area!!! There is a department we give mutual aid to about 50 miles away and their MAIN fire engine is circa 1940. It still has a brass bell on it for gods sakes!
Soooo I would assume that to have a dedicated car for the cheif, a department would have to be very well funded and it would have to be justified as well. I agree having a cheif car lends credibility to a departmen tho. My cheif (one hell of a WOMAN) drives a fairly worn out pickup. A good use for a cheif car would be to serve as a command post that could be moved from scene to scene. If the money for the cheif car were spent on equipment that equipment would likely have to remain at a scene.
We have fire chief cars here in Texas. I think the arson investigators used to have station wagons. It’s probably suv’s now though.