CrisPDuk

Avi, are you sure that's not the one Granada's props department are running? The same scoob has cropped up now in Manchester (Frost), the Home Counties (Midsomer Murders), & now Central London (Murder City)


And before anybody comments, yes I know I am a sad anorak for spotting it

Dapster

Made the rozzers look as hard as nails climbing out of one of these as well - they all look a bit effeminate in their Astra 1.4 LS's on The Bill.

Coolest police car I saw was a Porsche 993 Carrera with the German traffic boys - full livery (that horrible green and white) and the 2 police men were in full black race overall and strapped in with what looked like 4 point harnesses!

I also heard that the Italian cops had a fully dressed up Lambo Diabolo a few years ago (effectively saying to all the villains "don't even try to get away from us") - hard to believe but if anyone would do it, it would be the Italians!

CrisPDuk

AFAIK, the Lamborghini/Lotus type police cars are usually done at the manufacturer's expense, on the grounds that you can't beat the free publicity when all the papers feature it with a half page photo

AndyC_772

iTrader: (2)

In Japan I believe the police get Skylines - because nothing else can catch illegal street racers

Leslie

Whatever, I don't call it "misplaced" to support your own country.

Les

Dracoro

Leslie - I wasn't suggesting that supporting your country is misplaced.

I was suggesting that opinions may be misplaced if it means the the police don't have the best tools to work with. The better the tools, the better the job (in theory!), the better the country is to live in. That's what I call supporting the country.

ALi-B

iTrader: (1)

The same has happened to the ambulance service...they used to use sherpas, LDV's or whatever they were called (still the same 70's van )

But they were stopped probably because they handled crap, were too high off the ground (RWD and no AL-KO chassis conversions) for stretchers, unreliable, shook you to death and use dated gutless diesels...or more recently pug or "old" transit diesel engines.

V8 versions must have a grin factor though - even then they guzzled the juice and and like to lunch their camshafts etc.

Plod still use LDV's as paddy wagons round here, can't understand for the life of me why when you can buy a more reliable, more powerful, and fuel efficient transit more cheaply

Miles

<pedant> Actually Ford own them now <\pedant>

Franx

Ah yes, but they're still built in Solihull, Ford or not
Do Ford count as a British company, or are they American? Most of the ones we get are made over here, after all.

Anyway, if we limited our buying to only truly British cars, we'd only have things like Noble, Lotus, Caterham, Westfield, Reliant(?)(who I'm not sure exist any more), & things like that. Perhaps not very good police cars

I suppose whilst we're on the subject, why do our armed forces not buy British any more? The Pinzgauer http://www.pinzgauer.uk.com/ is used now instead of the Land Rover 101, at a price far greater than the cost of refurbishment would have been.

fatherpierre

I was in Paris last week and many of their cars are now BMWs.

DJB

Its not the fact that they're not British which annoys me but the tendency to use executive cars rather than fast/sports cars. Around my commute (M8/M77) the cars that I keep seeing are a Merc ML, a Merc C320, unmarked E320 and BMW 540i touring. Now these cars aren't slow but surely traffic cop comfort has been placed ahead of cost and performance. What next - maybe a Bentley or an Aston.

D.

Brendan Hughes

Thought many were made in Germany.

What's more British, a Rover owned by the Germans or a Nissan made in Sunderland??

Dapster

Traffic cops have to cart around an absolute ton of stuff - first aid, cones, jackets, signs, ropes, brooms, emergency lights, tools, etc which you couldn't fit into sports cars/coupes.

Also with all their training they could outdrive most of us in their lardy execs let alone a car load of nasty 14 year old chavs in an uninsured 1.0 Nova Merit.

Geddon

If the police want sensible cars that are reliable and have resale value- why do they have imprezas?
I can't personally believe the money they spend on some cars when there are equally good cheaper types available.
There's an X5 round Southampton- errr why??

OllyK

Coz Plod wants to have some fun as well and enough of them badgered ther purchasing officer

Chip

Rover are a UK company.

Chip.

Geddon

Google adds made me laugh- Classic cars and Bentleys. Hmmmmmm

lightning101

Agree with Chip -


http://www1.mg-rover.com/rover_GB_en...c/node725.html

Dracoro

Well come to think of it. Hardly anyone here drives 'british' so a bit hypocritical to slag off the police for doing the same thing.

Chip

I dunno. I think about half of the posters on here drive little Novas with big exhausts. ( and wear a cap of course)

OllyK

And IIRC Novas are made by Vauxhall who are owned by...GM

lightning101

So the following would be the choice

Rover Group

• Rover
• MG

Jaguar (now ford)
Rolls-Royce (now BMW)
Bentley (now VW)
Lotus (now KIA)
TVR
Aston Martin
AC
Caterham
Westfield
Morgan
Marcos
McLaren

Harry_Boy

Or maybe a Radical, Grinnall or Ariel Atom....

Dapster

Oh, and don't forget LTI (London Taxis International) makers of the Black Cab in Coventry. Maybe not the fastest car the traffic cops could use, but good turning circle although not much crime will be fought in South London after dark - "What, sarf o' the river, this time a night!! You gotta be 'avin a Roman mate!" etc etc

lmsbman

The reason the Police can "afford" flash cars is because they can source them a lot cheaper than joe public. For instance, my fleet manager can pick up a 3.2litre Omega for 14K. One of the reasons they are cheap, is that they are very low spec. For instance Volvo used to (maybe still do) do a special production run in September of Police Spec cars. No sunroofs, velour seats, no sat nav-cd player etc. So from the outside they might look flash cars but generally on the inside they are very basic. Of course, they do get the odd demo vehicle that comes fully loaded

Leslie

Fair enough Dracoro, I agree that they should have the right cars to do the job. They need comfortable cars too since they spend long hours in them on a shift.

Les

T.C

Although it is a few years since I left the job, it is probably still relevant.

When I forst went on Traffic we had XJ6 Jags, SD1 Rovers, 528 BMW's and 2.8 Granada's.

I was told that I was getting a new SD1 and had been invited up to Cowley to watch the car being built (we used to get personal issue in those days). The body shell was covered in mould and crap, but it went straight into the paint dip without so much as a washing down of the body as a means of preperation. Abouit 3 months after I took delivery of the car rust was coming through like you would not believe. What was more of a worry was the brakes. We were getting brake failure on a regular basis particularly from high speed, and without boring you, Rover admitted that they had designed the car to be safe up to 70 MPH! Anything over that was at the drivers own risk. The handling was about the worst I have experienced on any car, the drivers seats were always collapsing and eventually had to be bolted into a permanant position using a piece of angle iron, and I even deposited the gearbox down lane 1 of the M4 on one occasion.

The Jags were OK, but expensive to run and we had problems withthe gearboxes, however they did look the part. The Granada's were super reliable but dead slow as we ended up with the non injected 5 speed 2.8 which had no performance and a taxi pack interior. Eventually they went back to the injected variant with a higher spec interior and things imporved considerably.

The BMW's were tremendous, and in fact our last one is currently in the BMW Museum in Germany having completed over 400,000 without the heads being removed at any time, and on the couple of occasions I have visited the Museum they have let me drive it, still feels like new although they did do a full restoration job on it as the chassis cracked on a shout down the M4 one night.

The Senator was the last car I drove (although I was a full time motorcyclist) and that was quite nice, apart from the fact that the spec was low until Vauxhall realised that there was money to be made from providing the Police so they built a prototype with twin turbo's and that was unbelievable. Went to the crusher when it was decommisioned.

We hasd test cars from Mercedes (500SEL for a week of nights was nice) Audi, Porsche, Ferrari, lamborghini, plus concept cars from both Ford, Jaguar and Aston all desperate to secure a Police deal simply because it is a terrific form of advertising for them. Look at how the sales of BMW bikes have diminished since Honda became the main player.

It is a very lucrative market for the manufacturers and they will do whatever they can to entice forces to buy their products, so the fleet managers will listen to who can provide the best package and go that route rather than what is best for the job.

Katana

You mean now Proton.

fatherpierre

So there's a potential 'nice drink in it' for a fleet manager from car firms?

T.C

Without a doubt!