Police Volvo XC70
 

I bought an XC70 new in 2004 and put 230k miles on it, thought it was great. So when I wanted a cheap runabout to go up/down the M4 on a regular basis, thought I'd get another one.

Looking on Autotrader, I was surprised to find an 2011 XC70 D5 for £5k though it had 145k miles and was ex-Police. Too good to be true? Maybe, so I went and checked it out. Body straight, some cosmetic damage (scratches, car park dents etc), some damaged internal trim but it drove well and had been serviced every 9000 miles. Everything checked out, so haggled the price and took it away.

Since then, its been absolutely great. Another service, MOT showed no issues. I've replaced some of the trim things and reconnected the radio speaker which had been cut.

Its quite fast and I put that down to the 202bhp/310ftlb but handled differently to my previous one - better though a firmer ride. Sits on 17s with large discs filling the space behind. I thought I'd get the build list from a dealer as it wasn't quite the ES it was registered as. The obvious thing to notice was that it was a Police Spec (no surprise I guess) but not knowing what that meant, asked Volvo UK who kindly responded.

Won't go into all the bits but the main ones are:

Uprated front/rear shocks, springs & ARB, re-inforced rear lower stay arms.
Heavier duty Alternator & battery
17" Wheels as mentioned
XC90 front brakes (biggest Volvo do apparently)
Police Engine Calibration, which is essentially the Polestar ECU remap to 235bhp,340ftlb

So my somewhat "steady" diesel XC70 is a bit more of a wolf in sheep's clothing (well a small wolf maybe) and for the price I got it, an absolute bargain if you're not of the show 'n shine persuasion.

I thought it was a myth they fiddled with police cars. Clearly not!

i think although driven quite hard -police vehicles benefit from being driven lots and lots ,often 7 shifts a week-with issues of any kind dealt with at the dealers at service time -

When Sussex Police first took on the 850 T5s Volvo developed a brake upgrade for them as they were struggling due to the amount of extra weight they were carrying, this also included a Re designed wheel to clear the calipers.
Even the police spec 4x4 Sierra Saphire Cosworths were built with Motor Sport Shells as they didn't have sun roofs.

I bought my first octavia vrs based on hearing police ones had been remapped. Don't think they had been though.

Sounds like you got yourself a god motor.

Was it difficult getting all the sugar out of the carpet ...

You know, off their Donuts....!

Well...

Police spec have a blanking plate in the centre console (instead of cupholders/12v socket etc) and once I'd removed that (to replace) I found about a dozen pay n display tickets and a lot of white powder :eek:

White powder turned out to be where the manual gear change mechanism has ground down, which has resulted in making the change floppy and imprecise. Obviously the plod were not too mechanically sympathetic in their gear changes. I've a replacement mech to drop in when I've a free afternoon.

Servicing is very good. They get repaired to very good standards but knowing how hard they get hammered from cold with no regard to pot holes, speed humps etc I’d always be a little cautious. Sounds like you got a good one though.