We were able to stuff 4 arrestees into the back of our Crown Vics and still
get the doors closed, with a screen.

A great car best suited for law enforcement.  Our local agency have used
full sized Mercury's, Chevy's, mid-sized Pontiac's and Plymouth's since the
mid 70's.  The Ponchos handled like a slot car, but did hot have power.  The
440 equipted Plymouth's were like rocket ships, but had terrible brakes and
front suspensions.  The Chevy's were strong, had good brakes, but did not
handle well.

The Crown Vic models from the mid 70's to the current model year have been
consistantly a good compromise of power, handling, and braking.  Maintenance
is the most cost effective of  the bunch.  Crash protection is great, can
tell a bunch of first hand stories where officers were involved in crashes
and survived.

Go down the list of the best and worst... Plenty beat the Vic as being
worse.

Perhaps, if some of those makers provided police units the way Ford
(and likely others) has done in the past we'd see cops driving Volvos,
etc. Recall the 5.0 Mustangs the California CHP got.... $4K each...
and Ford sales of 5.0 Mustangs leaped. When buyers saw that they were
hot enough for the CHP to use, they wanted one, too.

As for other nations... don't forget that the speeds, aside from the
autobahn, are considerable lower, streets and roads are narrower,
visibility is often worse, the majority of cars are much lower
powered, and other such factors. And the laws are quite different in
many aspects.

When you drive some place like Portugal and come to an intersection,
and have to slowly nose your way out because you can't see through the
stone wall of farm fences or buildings which come right to the edge of
the street.... or you learn that at night drivers are not required to
use headlights as long as they are in a well lighted area... which
turns out to be a shop window's light reaches the street... you'd know
there is quite a world of difference which impacts high speed
pursuits. And punishments are far more severe than we see here. In the
UK it's not unusual to see a license taken away for violations which
here would be looked at as petty.


--

Spike
1965 Ford Mustang Fastback 2+2, Vintage Burgundy
w/Black Std Interior, A Code 289 C4 Trac-Lok;
Vintage 40 16" rims w/225/50ZR16 KDWS BF Goodrich
gForce Radial T/As, Cobra drop; surround sound
audio-video...
See my ride at....
Feb 2004- http://207.36.208.198/albums/86810/003_May_21_3004.jpg
Feb 2004- http://207.36.208.198/albums/86810/005_May_21_2004.jpg
Jul 2005- http://207.36.208.198/albums/86810/davescar_7_11_05_002.jpg
Jul 2005- http://207.36.208.198/albums/86810/Engine_rebuild_006.jpg

Just try to find a Crown Vic at a Ford dealer.  Never on the lot.

The consumer version seems to be the Mercury Grand Marquis, which is
readily available at STEEP discounts.   This platform has morphed into
the modern Checker cab, an anachronism which keeps selling into a large
niche market ... cop cars, cabs and limos (the Town Car variant).

Look at what all that did for the Checker Cab company :(.

John

I'm not a big fan of the American cars in general, but they're not all
garbage. One thing you need to understand though, is that roads in North
America are generally of much poorer condition than in Europe, and
distances far greater, so the cars need softer suspension to offer somewhat
decent comfort. And as a result, they have poorer handling.

But the only European cars that even come close in size to a Crown Victoria
is the Volvo 7s and 9s (which btw is just a Ford by a different name), BMW
7s, and Mercedes E and S.
And even then, just because it's a European car, doesn't mean it's any
safer to be a cop. In Denmark, I've seen cops crash just about every model
of car they have: Peugeot 406, BMW 535i, Volvo 440, Ford Mondeo, Ford
Taunus, and a whole bunch of others. The Beemers were originally bought to
catch speeders, but had to be scrapped because they had too much power for
the cops to handle.
A lot of the Fords actually got lowered and stiffened suspension, high
performance brakes, high-performance ABS electronics, and a bunch other
mods, just for the cars to be able to survive everyday police work. No
off-the-shelf car can handle being pushed hard every single day, the
components are just not designed for hard driving.

If you want cops to be safe, then you need to basically provide them with
race cars: Roll cage, racing suspension and brakes, increased driver input
(the amount of feeling that gets filtered out of the steering on modern
cars makes them more dangerous at high speed maneuvering).