Chased a 2008 mustang gt with my patrol car.

kstruckcountry · October 19, 2014

Interesting you mention that, I saw a Caprice in Durango when I was there last winter. I think it was a highway patrol car.

blackout07 · October 20, 2014

The caprice is nice but there's just no room. Throw two guys in there with all of their gear and it's tight. Add in a moderately large prisoner or 2 and it's not very practical depending on the agency.

StinkyCheese · October 20, 2014

They would have to put them back into production then.

Not necessarily. Doesn't ford (or any auto maker) still have to supply parts for a discontinued car for 10 years or so? Even if that's not true the vic has been around long enough and in enough numbers that after market will be around for a while still. They are simple/easy to work on too. Isn't there some police department in Kali that has their own frame straightening machine for them?

Or departments could just do what OPD and OCSO do here, use confiscated cars as unmarked lol. I always get a kick out of my friends who live in other states say "I saw this car used as an unmarked" and so on. My usual response is down here if you see it on the road it's possible it's a cop car. I can't even keep track of everything they use here. Silverados, PT cruisers, jettas, mini vans, old 5.0 mustangs...

blackout07 · October 20, 2014

Not necessarily. Doesn't ford (or any auto maker) still have to supply parts for a discontinued car for 10 years or so? Even if that's not true the vic has been around long enough and in enough numbers that after market will be around for a while still. They are simple/easy to work on too. Isn't there some police department in Kali that has their own frame straightening machine for them?

Or departments could just do what OPD and OCSO do here, use confiscated cars as unmarked lol. I always get a kick out of my friends who live in other states say "I saw this car used as an unmarked" and so on. My usual response is down here if you see it on the road it's possible it's a cop car. I can't even keep track of everything they use here. Silverados, PT cruisers, jettas, mini vans, old 5.0 mustangs...

Maybe very large agencies straighten frames, etc. But my city won't keep them because they don't want to use aftermarket parts due to some form of liability.

02suburbanZ71 · October 21, 2014

Aftermarket are never as good as gm. We get aftermarket parts all the time at my shop and they never fit like they should. Frame pulling on the impala cop cars is a real bitch lol

Colossus · October 21, 2014

You won't be seeing the "refurbishing" of the Crown Vics like you saw of the 94-96 Caprice 9C1s for one reason- the newer vehicles are more fuel effecient and the fleets continue to get awesome discounts for purchasing new. All the cab companies are now going with more fuel effecient vehicles instead of buying the used police vehicles in bulk like they once did. Minivans and hybrids seem to be especially popular arond here now.

Doug_Scott · October 21, 2014

Not necessarily. Doesn't ford (or any auto maker) still have to supply parts for a discontinued car for 10 years or so? Even if that's not true the vic has been around long enough and in enough numbers that after market will be around for a while still. They are simple/easy to work on too. Isn't there some police department in Kali that has their own frame straightening machine for them?

Or departments could just do what OPD and OCSO do here, use confiscated cars as unmarked lol. I always get a kick out of my friends who live in other states say "I saw this car used as an unmarked" and so on. My usual response is down here if you see it on the road it's possible it's a cop car. I can't even keep track of everything they use here. Silverados, PT cruisers, jettas, mini vans, old 5.0 mustangs...

Keep in mind that every state can be considered their own country in regards to quite a few laws. I always though that there was a 10 year rule as well growing up. I found out about 25 or 30 years ago that manufacturers only need to keep an adequate supply of parts to satisfy any warranty claims, and further to that, they also need to be able to get you that part within a reasonable length of time. This is Canada, so states may be different.

I found this out because a customer brought in a Dodge Colt that was 3 years old, with near 160,000km on it for a tune up. When asked if there were any concerns as to how the car was running, I got the regular answer, "no, it is just time". Took the car for a road test before working on it(simply due to customers always neglecting to answer that question truthfully), pulled out onto a major road, stepped on the gas, and promptly nearly smacked my nose off the steering wheel. Looked in mirror and saw a truck coming at 40mph, with me at 5mph and absolutely no power, let off the gas about half way, and car started to accel enough to allow me to get off the road and back onto our lot at the other entrance. After walking away for about a half hour to cool down, I approached the customer and asked if maybe he left something out about how the car was running. He then decided to tell me that the car won't go faster than 10mph, and that he took all the back roads in.

Now to jump to the relevant information...after some checking it turned out to be a plugged catalytic converter. This was before the aftermarket had started supplying converters. I called the dealer that I used to work at, they said converters were on back order from Japan. No ETA on them. At that time, after nearly having a Mack enema, I really did not care when he got his car back. Emission controls were really being monitored back then around here, so removing the converter was not an option that I could do. Customer was free to do it himself, but he had already signed the work order saying he knew the laws regarding this.(remember, I was still pissed, and was not going to do him any favours). He left the car while he figured out what he was going to do. In the meantime my buddy at the dealership parts counter called and said that he had just gone through something similar and that if I called Ministry of Consumers Affairs, and told them what was happening, they would get involved since that part was still under warranty on the car except for mileage, which meant that if there was another car with less miles, it would be under warranty and Chrysler needed to maintain an adequate supply of parts. I called them, told them the story, and two days later the part arrived from Japan. Chrysler could not just pull it in from the states for some reason, it had to come from the next closest place. It was flown to Toronto airport, and dealer picked it up from Chrysler head office in Mississauga.

Cliff Notes Version: under warranty, they must maintain supply of parts. After warranty is out on all cars sold, no longer required to have parts. In Canada.

99silveradoz71 · October 21, 2014

We ended up winning a car a couple years back, and the powers that be chose a Caprice. Unfortunately for our purposes it was a mistake. We use it for one of our accident investigation vehicles, and the trunk has no space for their gear.

Colossus · October 22, 2014

The Caprice is fast, faster than the Charger (slightly) but it has about the same room as the Impala and Taurus. Also many departments were turned off from the Caprice because for the first few years it had a center console shifter. Making it very difficult to mount the nessiceary equipment.

chevyguy45 · October 22, 2014

The charger will outhandle the caprice hands down. Motor trend has a video of a new pursuit posting faster times around a track than a handful of bmw's. And the caprice is slightly faster than a 06-10 charger but not the 2011 and up. Car and driver has one going from 0-60 in 5.2 seconds.

Doug_Scott · October 23, 2014

The charger will outhandle the caprice hands down. Motor trend has a video of a new pursuit posting faster times around a track than a handful of bmw's. And the caprice is slightly faster than a 06-10 charger but not the 2011 and up. Car and driver has one going from 0-60 in 5.2 seconds.

That will come in handy next time they have a high speed chase on a closed circuit environment. I put little impact into closed circuit testing on anything but a race vehicle. Even the 0-60 times are rarely involved in a high speed chase. It really does little to shorten a chase by being able go slightly faster.

Add in the wide range of scenarios that get played out during a chase, and it becomes fairly obvious that having a faster car is of little advantage in real world driving.

They should put a line down the center of a road race course, add in normal traffic in both directions, and then test the cars for speed and handling. Don't even need a car to chase. But adding one it will slow the speed down even more. They could just put parked car in the opposing lane at various spots, including mid turn to make it more realistic. And then run the track in the opposite direction. Pretty sure Gratton already does run the track in reverse for some motorcycle track days. They used to do it for Ducati Owners Club track days.

chevyguy45 · October 23, 2014

Thats true but it is still impressive numbers and shows us how capable our cars are. We dont have alot of city traffic down in central Fl. If you go to a city like Orlando or Tampa sure but we have alot of open highways and at night they dont have alot of traffic. From my few days of testing the two the charger is a much nicer driving car all around.