Law enforcement officers have more reasons to be excited with Carbon Motors' release of a few more images and a video of its purpose-built Police car. The E7, as it is currently known, looks to be much more capable than the thousands of Crown Vics, Impalas and Chargers currently roaming our streets due to its rather amazing list of specifications and gadgetry. Included are a diesel engine capable of accelerating to 65 in under 7-seconds, composite body panels attached to an aluminum structure, 360-degree built-in police-duty LED lights, suicide rear doors with hose-out passenger compartment and a separate front compartment with plenty of techno-goodies. Radar, LoJack, an automatic license plate recognition system, radiation and biological threat detectors and Carbon's exclusive On-board Rapid Command Architecture (ORCA) which features a large touch-screen display plus keyboard (see above), are all included. We think that this sucker should get the job done rather nicely. Click here for a short video of the E7 in action.
Sheriff Buford T. Justice will now be able to chase your Bandit *** all over the country if he's protecting and serving behind the wheel of a 2009 Dodge Charger police car. The Charger's 368-horsepower HEMI is nearly double what Pontiac was putting underneath the screaming chicken back in '77, and gives the cop-spec Charger the most power of any police car on offer; plenty of snort underfoot when it's time to apprehend individuals devoid of respect for the law. Hot pursuit will last longer, too, with Chrysler's Multi Displacement System switching off half the cylinders in the V8 to conserve 20-percent more fuel. The venerated Ford Panthers were rugged and inexpensive for fleets, but the Charger gives officers a firepower upgrade while also offering a chassis that's far more capable. It's never been advisable to attempt running from the police, but that's now an extremely bad idea with the upgraded Charger on the beat. We discovered this first hand, not when we were arrested, but when Dodge gave us a cop-spec Charger to play with for a week.
We haven't heard a peep from Carbon Motors in a very long time, but that doesn't mean the company hasn't been hard at work on its purpose-built E7 police car concept. To prove that it's moving forward, the automaker-to-be has just released two shots of a real E7. What's more, the company will show the car to prospective clients – police officers – at the upcoming 115th Annual International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) Conference and Exposition. Unlike curent cop cars driven by these officers, usually police-spec Crown Vic Interceptors, the E7 was specifically designed just to do police duty. Instead of a 4.6-liter Ford V8 engine underhood, the E7 will feature a clean-diesel engine capable of running on biodiesel. With a cockpit derived from jet-fighter technology that includes built-in radar, radiation and biological threat detectors among other techno goodies, the E7 sounds suitably high-tech for real-life crime fighters of the modern era. To further highlight this point, check out the video, along with the press release, after the break.
more ...
Somewhere, our pal Mike Bumbeck is smiling, because Mitsubishi has produced yet another vehicle worthy of its classic "Super Potential" slogan. No, there's no new-fangled Starion, unfortunately, but there is now an i MiEV police car. Mitsubishi has supplied one of the teensy EVs to the Kanagawa Prefecture police, who will test it through March of next year. Sure, it's not particularly intimidating, but it is (ahem) arrestingly cute. As mentioned at AutoblogGreen, we'd have had that battery pack power a set of on-board tasers, too. Talk about missed opportunities...
Being a cop just got a little more fun for state troopers in the state of Indiana. The police department just purchased 18 brand new black Ford Mustang GTs for traffic patrol, with one being sent to each district. The Mustangs look completely stock and only have a light bar inside the top of the windshield - not even antennas usually found on unmarked vehicles. A few troopers took the opportunity to test out their new pony cars at O'Reilly Raceway Park last week and found them to handle "differently" than the Crown Vics. We would hope so.
It's a rather undignified process, being pulled over by the police. Next time you're sitting at the side of the road with the lights flashing in your rearview mirror, just think of this: at least you weren't pulled over by a VW Beetle. Unless you reside in Blount County, Tennessee, where Archie Garner, a 40-plus-year police veteran, nabbed this 1972 Beetle in a DUI case and summarily converted it into an Interceptor. Not that it does too much intercepting, being capable of only 70 miles per hour or so using the stock air-cooled 1600cc engine.
The "bug-erceptor", as it's affectionately referred to, just so happens to be car 53, wearing the same number as the lovable bug from the Herbie movie enterprise, and sees most of its duty in parades and on public relations missions. Wouldn't it be fun, though, to see your buddy pulled over in his souped-up Camaro by a Beetle? That's a story he'd never be able to live down.
We happen to know a thing or two about impersonating an officer, having reviewed a 2008 Dodge Charger Cop Car and been detained by Dearborn police for our troubles. Our tester looked a bit too much the like the real deal, with a white-on-black paint job, working light bar and even a set of bumper bars. Thus, we can sympathize with Jessie Vigil, a Las Vegas resident and disabled Iraq war veteran who transformed his 2007 Mustang into Barricade, the evil Decepticon from the Transformers movie. What would possess a man to turn his Mustang into a movie prop? Well, his 7-year-old son really liked the movie, so now he's got a full-scale Transformers toy.
Vigil created his cop car the right way by first contacting the local authorities and asking if his project were legal. While the Chief Deputy District Attorney discouraged him from doing it, there was nothing on the books that expressly forbade it. The only thing the law prohibits is impersonating an officer, and it was decided Vigil didn't fit that description for two reasons. One, the car is a Mustang and apparently Las Vegas police have no Mustangs in their fleet. Two, the police themselves sell their old cruisers without repainting them, so there's already lots of vehicles running around with white-on-black paint jobs. There are other signs this Decepticon is a dud as well, like the many movie-related vinyl graphics and the totally fake light bar.
While most locals know the car by now, authorities are still concerned that drivers on the interstate might get confused and ask Vigil for help. If we learned anything from Michael Bay's opus last summer, it's don't ask a Mustang cop car for help. They're the evil ones.
Many thanks to Anton, an Autoblog reader from Down Under, who was kind enough to grab a couple of snapshots showing us one of the Queensland Police Department's new highway patrol cars. We've reported on Toyota Australia's TRD Aurion before -- it's basically the Camry we want but can't have. With a much better-looking face and 323 supercharged horses underhood, the Aussie-built sedan is inherently more appealing than the vanillamobile available at our local Toyota stores. And now the fuzz has them, too.
more ...
Each September since the Fifties, the police force of state of Michigan carried out the test of performance of vehicle on the last cars of pirn of wire. Before the beginning of the Seventies when the first oil embargo occurred, it would leave for offers each year and then would examine just bottom conveys of offer. In these days, the test was limited to acceleration, the higher speed and the braking distance.
According to the lieutenant. David Halliday of the police force of state of Michigan, as car manufacturers fought at this time and scrambling to sell their larger vehicles, they all the offers of tender started around the same price with only of the $45 drew aside to cover all candidates one year. Around this time they decided to start to examine all the vehicles available and they also made their test results available to all the interested agencies of police force. For the last three decades, a piece of that annual test was led at the Chrysler proving the ground as Chelsea, SEMI.
more ...
