Huh.

"CB" (jrcb) 08/18/2014 at 01:13 • Filed to: Ford, Canadalopnik, Autotrader

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!!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! while looking for diesel manual station wagons. Those silly Quebecois with their imported cars.

But yeah, five grand for an automotive unicorn (in North America, at least) with relatively low mileage? And seven seats? Sounds like a party.

michael bleggi > CB 08/18/2014 at 01:17

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five.... five thousand dollars? for that? ugggghhhhh NP so hard

Svend > CB 08/18/2014 at 01:38

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Go for it. Our police use these as armed response cars as they are quite rapid and have a lot of space inside (I gave the Chief Constables, unmarked police car a going over once, very little wear and tear for something that has been out quite a while now).

Good, pretty reliable cars.

GhostZ > Svend 08/18/2014 at 02:00

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This is the first, and probably the only, time I've seen someone call a wagon with a 0-60 time if 11 seconds "quite rapid". Not that I disagree (how fast a car is on the street is sometimes more the driver, not the machine) but as someone who's steeped in US culture, it's really hard for me to wrap my head around the idea of a policeman using a minivan, much less a diesel minivan.

MultiplaOrgasms > GhostZ 08/18/2014 at 02:11

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Depends on the model I guess. I know for a fact that these can be ordered with 2nd and 3rd gen FoST engines, i.e. the 5-cylinder Turbo and 2.0 EcoBoost.

duurtlang > GhostZ 08/18/2014 at 04:45

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As a European it's hard for me to wrap my head around a policeman using a sedan, especially a sedan with a gasoline V8 engine. They all use wagons here. Wagons, or minivans like the pictured Ford. Anyway, like Multipla mentioned, they can be had with a wide variety of engines, including the Focus ST engines and many diesels including some rather potent ones. It's no drag racer but it doesn't need to be anyway.

Doesn't the US police use SUVs? I'd argue many of the newer ones are like minivans with more buff looking plastic.

GhostZ > duurtlang 08/18/2014 at 09:27

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US police uses a variety, but I'd say it's about 70% Sedans, 25% SUVs, and 5% trucks. Of the 70% sedans, a good 65% of them are probably Dodge Chargers, the rest are Ford Police Interceptors (Taurus SHO) and Chevy PPV.

In the US, a police car needs to be able to make regular pulls around 120mph and deceleration down to 60 afterwards, repeatedly and reliably. They also need to be able to execute a pit maneuver, and to push/ram disabled vehicles off the road. They have to be able to fit 2 police officers up front, with a sealed passenger area that can fit 2-3 passengers inside. Additionally, it needs to be able to do all that for up to 150,000 miles or so without requiring significant repairs. They need adequate trunk space to fit a variety of equipment (ranging from roadside safety equipment to arms) fit a large backup power supply for the electronics within the vehicle (they all have large laptops in them now, along with a number of security cameras, which all record and monitor everything going on so they can operate with better teamwork, very Fast and Furious). If the car's battery is disabled, it's imperative that the rest of these systems remain intact.

To do that, any 2.0l 4 cylinder is going to require forced induction and an aggressive cam profile (trying to squeeze 300+ ft/lbs) that makes it unusable and unreliable for those purposes. Cops here get bothered if they have to use a Twin Turbo V6 over a naturally aspirated V8. It has nothing to do with being power-hungry either, but they know if (or when) something goes wrong, the V8 is going to cost a few hundred dollars to repair, the twin turbo V6 is going to cost many times more than that.

In the early 2000s, 99% of all cop cars were Ford Crown Victorias. The Dodge Charger replaced them soon after in the mid-2000s, and it's only now that the Taurus Police Interceptor and Caprice PPV are out. The other two are appealing because they offer better fuel economy and some other misc. things, but are seeing slow adoption because it's much easier to have a standardized, cheap fleet than to have one that is specialized and more expensive. In other words: there are so many Dodge chargers out there that it's worth paying more just to continue having Dodge chargers, so the parts swap and officers feel comfortable no matter what cop car they are in. Combine that with the fact that not all chargers are V8 cars, some are naturally aspirated V6s, and there's little reason to use anything else.

On top of that, to be able to execute those maneuvers a vehicle has to be heavier than most of the vehicles it will be pushing off the road. Having a large, RWD sedan for that is paramount.

As for Diesels, I believe a combination of the need to reach higher speeds (necessitating longer gearing for a diesel than a gas engine) along with the lack of cheap diesel motors and feared unreliability of small diesels keep them out. Bear in mind that if they go Diesel, it has to be naturally aspirated straight-6 or V8, or you just bring in all the problems of turbocharging again too. Ultimately, the slight MPG gain is going to be completely outweighed by simply being different. And when you're buying 1000 out of several million cars in the US for use with a police department, different = expensive = bad.

duurtlang > GhostZ 08/18/2014 at 10:33

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My comment wasn't meant as criticism, it's merely clear that the requirements are very different on either side of that big ocean. I'm sure both sides make ration choices. The US choices wouldn't 'fit' here and the European choices wouldn't 'fit' in North America.

I don't know that much about police vehicles, but I don't believe regular police vehicles are intended to do PIT maneuvers here, or push vehicles off the road. A sealed barrier in a normal police vehicle (or taxi) isn't present here either, although there are specialized vans to pick up potentially harmful suspects. My interpretation is that a significant difference stems from American vehicles being intended to do everything decently, while the European ones are more specialized and are better suited to a more limited amount of tasks. The economy of scale is present here too, usually a region uses just a few different vehicles. I see many VW Tourans here, while near my girlfriend (Munich, Germany) the standard police cruiser is a BMW 5-series wagon.

GhostZ > duurtlang 08/18/2014 at 13:08

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My comment wasn't meant as criticism, it's merely clear that the requirements are very different on either side of that big ocean.

I didn't take it at criticism either, you just got me thinking and I thought I'd take some time to outline what I believe are the major differences between enforcement that causes that.

But you're right. In the US, police vehicles seem to be "all purpose" and ubiquitous across departments. Not specialized at all. I wonder if the government has stricter requirements for what is 'allowed' to be used as a police vehicle too. That, I don't know.