Portland has started replacing the old CVs with Hemi Chargers. They’re…not slow.
Aaaand, (speaking of Mustangs), if you manage to get away from the Charger, good luck with this.
We’ll have to agree to disagree, on the performance angle. You may be right about the service intervals, but I don’t see Crown vics as superior in that regard. My 94 9c1 has about 206,000 miles, and drives like the day I got it at 89,000. But, of course, all anecdotal once we talk about who’s car can last how long… several variables at play here. Caprice cabs of those years are still on the road with 300,000 miles.
Talking about the '94-96 versions…
The Caprices police had were called 9C1’s. They had everything the Implala SS had, but with differences in suspension. Instead of lowered, it had taller springs. Had a transmission and oil cooler, steel wheels in stead of aluminum (but retained larger breaks). There was hardly any difference in powerplants, except the year to year changes.
You could say the Impala was derived from 9C1’s, as they had been in service well before 1994. Actually, I am saying that. They took the 9C1, lowered it, gave it a nice paint job with leather interior, and hooked it up with fatter tires on 17" wheels with other subtle differences.
I know some cops are not too keen on the Crown Vics, to put it mildly.
I hadn’t yet seen an eighth-generation Impala used by the Ottawa Police Service when I took that photo in April 2007, but Ottawa now has at least one marked eighth-gen Impala in service, presumably on some kind of trial basis.
I also spotted one marked Ottawa Police Service seventh-generation Impala once but haven’t been able to get a photo of it. The OPS mainly seems to use Impalas as unmarked vehicles.
Interestingly, the RCMP in Ottawa uses seventh-generation Impalas extensively, but I have yet to spot a single eighth-generation Impala in the RCMP livery.
Follow that argument to its conclusion and you’ll have the police driving tanks. What if the psycho is in a small vehicle, and heads off across ground which a larger car gets bogged down in? Or simply drives down an alleyway too small? You can’t make a must that covers every eventuality.
The newer Impalas. They looked bright and shiny new, I lived there from 2004-2008, and their model looked similar (at least in the outside) to my ex’s 2001 Impala.
And you can be as skeptical as you want to be, but what I saw was that and there’s no way you’re going to talk me out of it.
Answer: None of the above.
Yeah, but how many villains the size of Tony Soprano would you get in the back seat of one of those.
Hey, at least this one has four doors.
For the purposes of this thread, though, I’ll assume we’re talking about standard, marked, all-purpose patrol cars, right?
The Suburban actually does make a pretty good police vehicle, just not the best patrol car. There are quite a few Suburban police vehicles here in southeast Michigan, but they’re not patrols. Aside from the omnipresent Crown Victoria, you’ll see a Charger or two, an Impala here and there, and a Mustang or two. These last three are primarily unmarked, though, and used to trap excessive speeders.
I drove one this summer. Due to the massive blind spot I managed to cut off at least 3 people, more than I remember having done in my previous 25 years of driving. Not something I’d want to be driving fast while avoiding traffic and managing radios, etc. Although, reading on the net, it seems some are more bothered by it than others.
I’ve seen a Camaro, before the radical redesign, but you’re pretty much right about the police car landscape around here.
Correct; the Chevy Tahoe may be great for carrying the scales you use for commercial truck weight enforcement, and a Humvee might actually be appropriate for Border Patrol usage somewhere in the Southwest, but they’re out of scope.
No, what you just said is what I expected you to say.
If your sole criteria is turning radius, no argument.
A vote for dumbest.
You don’t see police sporting Crown Vics very often in St. Louis. I want to say there is only one municipality that even has one. They have all been replaced with Impalas. Also, police modified Dodge Chargers are popping up everywhere in St. Louis. Some municipalities have like 6 of them… Even taxi companies are using them.
The answer to the OP, Worst Police Car: Chevy Lumina. Yes we had a couple. Under powered and too small to use for transport. Very uncomfortable too.
Worst of all possible worlds, eh?
Are you old enough to have seen the Chevy Celebrity police package?
I’m thinking that would have had all of the disadvantages of the Lumina, although relative to the Caprice and Crown Vic of that era, it may not have been slow.
Too small to transport what? The Lumina had a 107 in. wheelbase… about 10 inches shorter than a freakin’ Mercedes S-Class.
But the space distribution was, shall we say, less than optimal. Then again, truth be told the CrownVic/GrandMarquis interior is not exactly as cavernous as its size would seem to suggest, it’s just that it hasn’t been downsized.
As was mentioned before, the CrownVic/GrandMarquis was popular for the police/taxi conversion in part because of the old-school body-on-frame RWD layout, that is seen as more forgiving of abuse (and easier to mod to HD specs) than FWD unibodies. It may not necessarily be objectively so anymore for every application, but perceptions count. Nobody gets fired for buying the same car they’ve been buying for the last 15 years…