All hail the return of the gangster car. Or, more pertinently, the return of a Dover councillor’s accusation that the mayor of Dover, Neil Rix, would like to tool around his domain in “a big gangster car”.
Rix, if you recall, would like his Toyota Prius replaced by something larger and, ideally, grander: a Volvo S90, a Skoda Superb or a Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV. This isn’t the kind of vice that makes you a gangster in my book, but what do I know?
Anyway, none of those cars sounded very gangster to me. And, dear reader, neither do they to you. You may or may not be gangsters yourselves, but you have written in your droves. Well, dozens. Okay, tens. Well, look, a few of you emailed.
You suggest, among other things, that all gangsters are online these days anyway. You send a photograph, that I can never now unsee, of local grandees posing next to a Reliant Robin wearing Rolls-Royce badges. You propose that a new Vauxhall Insignia Grand Sport might be more appropriate for today’s street- going criminal, what with it being a much larger vehicle than a Prius but available for very competitive lease hire rates. Most sinisterly, you note that scooters are the prime choice of many inner city renegades.
But none of these interests me as much as a note from <name redacted> of the <city redacted> police service. He’s no gangster, you understand, but he has come across, he says with some understatement, “one or two”.
“The cars of choice,” he says, “tend to be the very fast Audi or VW brigade. RS-anything, Golf R, etc.”
Silly me – and silly councillor – for being concerned about flexible financing and PCP deals, because “they tend to prefer the stolen variety where possible”. Of course they do.
The reasons for these car choices are the same reasons you’d want one in civilian life. They are “comfy and carry plenty of bodies, cash, weapons”. Okay, not quite the same reasons you’d want one in law-abiding life, but you get the idea.
Trouble is, as my man in the know goes on to explain, “they are pretty much uncatchable. Our traffic cars – BMW 530d, 330d and BMW X5 – are no match, let alone our mighty Peugeot 308 diesel response cars."
There is a serious edge to this. Last year, 28 people were killed during police pursuits. Although they were mostly those who put themselves in a chase, there is the fear that pursuits are lasting for longer because traffic police numbers in England and Wales have halved since 2000.
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The Police are involved with to many RTAs.
Best to put them into slower less powerful vehicles. Something more in line with their actual abilities, as opposed to the nonsense broadcast on TV.
It's a power thing and it isn't the cars...
This reminds me of a conversation I brought up with my driving instructor during my Initial 'Blues and Twos' course when I was in the police. I was driving a 1.9 diesel Passat and laughing at the car I'd been driving on division which was a 1.4 Vauxhall Astra petrol. My instructor paused and then raised their voice stating that "Back in my day I'd have walked for two years and not moaned about the car I'd been given to get around in".
I did continue the story saying that trying to respond to a job where our police car couldn't keep up with normal traffic seemed a little pointless but they had none of it. If you weren't a traffic cop frankly you didn't deserve any faster than a diesel hatchback.... The fact that in the 'job' most police officers detest traffic officers with a passion means there's a huge resentment connected with the entitlement associated with a white hat. I would rather have had a wasp nest up my backside than had my personality removed to do that job where you were pretty much hated by the general public and all the other 'normal' officers you worked with.
So should the police have faster cars? No, because it would feed the egos of a bunch of traffic officers who use their personalities as contraception! :)
If you're doubting a modern
If you're doubting a modern hot hatch's ability to leave a laden 330d traffic car for dead you need to watch Traffic Cops on CH5. Probably on tonight and filmed round where I live, a couple of weeks ago they broadcast a show where a Golf R was running rings around traffic cars for 90 minutes. Being hamstrung by vehicle weight, a thing called the law and severly reduced numbers means plod is at a disadvantge.