The world’s coolest police cars

Imagine how much more interesting it would be if the roads were patrolled by Porsche 911s, or Audi R8s, or Honda NSXs?

Or a hot-hatchback like the Ford Escort RS Cosworth, pictured, which saw service in the UK? Well, the police in one part of the world or other have used all these cars, and a whole lot more, so take a look at these:

Compact, agile and very eco, the BMW i3 has been adopted by numerous police forces around the globe for panda car work in urban environments. This is one of 100 electric i3s ordered by the Los Angeles Police Department, for urban patrols, at a cost of $2.9 million.

While the deal has done much for LA’s green credentials, the sand in the ointment is that Los Angeles is a large, sprawling conurbation, as you’d have thought someone might have noticed. It seems officers have found the 80-100 mile single-charge range a challenge, and so the i3s are not used as much as the department’s more conventional vehicles, and in 2020 many were sold off.

The Fairlady Z is better known as the 350Z in most places outside Japan, and was the car that marked the company’s revival as maker of interesting cars after a near-death experience in the late 1990s. But this particular model is more notable still, as it’s the tuned up Nismo version. A significant number of them were placed into the service of the Tochigi Prefecture police force in central Japan in 2008.

This Nismo version only boosted the 304bhp 3.5-litre V6 up to 310bhp, but added delectable goodies including a Viscous Limited-Slip Differential (VLSD), uprated suspension, a new traction control system, a NISMO aerodynamics package, and Brembo brakes.

Dodge’s first official police package was offered on the Coronet from 1956. The 1959 model, shown here, came with a 314bhp Hemi V8, push-button TorqueFlite automatic transmission and the distinctive, be-finned ‘Forward Look’ styling pioneered by its designer Virgil Exner.

“They go from standstill to highest pursuit speeds in a flash,” crowed an advertisement, “handle, corner and stop like no other car you’ve ever seen or driven.” The Coronet was one of many contemporary police models to feature in the popular TV series Highway Patrol.

A Texan sheriff didn’t want to have to drive a regular Hummer H2; he wanted something a whole lot meaner. So he commissioned German tuning company Geiger to uprate things by supercharging the 7.0-liter V8 to produce 710bhp and 667lb ft of torque – and to fit 28-inch wheels to make sure the car was as uncomfortable as it was fast.

Only Germany’s most highly trained traffic cops got to drive one of these ‘Baroque Angels’, with its 2.6-litre V8 (later a 3.2-litre V8). BMW did all of the work in-house, building each car specifically for Polizei use.

OK, OK, we know it’s not a car. But we’re talking about Venice here, where police cars aren’t much use. This barge is used to cart the local police’s prisoners around.

Rover offered 2.0- and 2.2-liter four-cylinder P6s, but it was the 3.5-litre V8, especially in 3500 S manual form, that was the perfect traffic car with its effortless highway performance. It was normally painted white, but the odd Zircon Blue car featured.

What’s interesting about this particular car? We drove it a few years ago and discovered that it’s armour plated, weighs 2000kg, and between 1973 and 1987 ferried around VIPs including members of the British royal family and then-prime minister Margaret Thatcher. Much of the boot was taken up with high-powered radio equipment.

The Italian traffic police were well known for their two Lamborghini Gallardos, one of which was wrecked in a high-speed pursuit. Undeterred by this small setback, the Carabinieri has replaced the remaining Gallardo with a Huracán, used for carrying urgent human organ donations in a refrigerated compartment in the nose.

While North American police forces quite enjoyed using the somewhat villainous-looking Chrysler 300 sedan, they lapped up its sister car, the Dodge Charger. So much indeed that Dodge made a special Police specification model, later named ‘Pursuit’. The current Pursuit model features a 3.6-litre V6 good for 296bhp, and is available with all-wheel drive.

This particular example is in service with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, roughly the equivalent of America’s FBI.

The Mustang SSP is one of Ford’s best-known pursuit vehicles. Its high-output 5.0-litre V8 gave a 15.5-second quarter-mile time and helped it “chase Porsches for a living”, according to contemporary advertising (pictured). Rack-and-pinion steering, power disc brakes and heavy-duty stabilizer bars helped it keep the 911s in view.

Following an arduous test program, in 1982 the California Highway Patrol, as the launch customer, purchased 400 of the specially equipped Mustangs, with a planned service life of 18 months. Ford produced the Mustang SSP until 1993.

Another German police car favorite was the Volkswagen Beetle, which was to be seen in towns and cities nationwide. In 1970 Volkswagen tried to get British police forces to adopt the Beetle as their Panda car of choice – but they chose to stick with British marques instead.

Nearly all unmarked police cars are cool, and we absolutely love small, hot unmarked police cars. This Audi S3 is used by Surrey Police in southern England for highway enforcement. The S3 features a four-cylinder 2.0-liter turbocharged engine producing 300bhp, whose blistering 0-62mph time of just 4.6 seconds must often come in useful.

The Range Rover was one of the most popular traffic patrol cars throughout the 1970s. Cheshire Constabulary was the first to buy some, in April 1971, soon after the vehicle first went on sale. It was equipped with the famous GM-designed compact alloy V8 engine, which in this application delivered 130bhp, which doesn’t sound much by modern standards. However, its 186lb ft of torque was capable of pulling a fully laden truck out of the way, which is why the police loved their Rangies.

First established back in 1948, Unimog is the famed go-anywhere all-wheel drive commercial brand of Mercedes-Benz. They’re widely used by fire and forestry departments, and come into their own in winter weather. This particular example is equipped with a front scoop, collecting equipment and signage in connection with policing the demonstrations during the G20 Hamburg summit held in 2017.

We don’t know how highly trained the Dubai police drivers are, but presumably they go through plenty of extra testing (and retesting) to get behind the wheel of one of the force’s two Bugatti Veyrons. The Veyron features a W16 engine with four turbochargers, belting out 1000bhp, and capable of a 253mph top speed. More than enough to keep Dubai’s boy racers in check, we presume.

Police vehicles tend to get very heavy usage compared to normal cars. After all, they spend most of their time out and about on patrol and responding to emergencies. As such, the limited range of many electric vehicles, combined with the amount of time needed to recharge them compared to the five minute fill-up of a normal car, would seem to make them less-than-perfect.

However, with a real-world range of around 250 miles, the Tesla Model S has one of the longest of any electric car. And they are also extremely fast. But the icing on the cake of this particular application is that Luxembourg is a small place (34 miles wide and 50 miles high at its extremes), so range is less of an issue than it might be elsewhere.

London’s Metropolitan Police bought a big batch of these two-seater glassfiber-bodied sports cars for its traffic division. With each one powered by an incredibly flexible 2.5-liter V8, they were just the job for catching villains like bank robbers.

This 1935 Buick was adapted for police use with spotlights, gun ports and, most likely, bullet-proof glass, but Buicks of the period already came with safety glass – one of a number of engineering features that marked them out from the competition.

The straight-eight-powered 1935 models also boasted an accelerator starter and Knee Action independent front suspension. Knee Action was a pioneering design by one of the greatest names in vehicle dynamics, Maurice Olley. Having previously worked at Rolls-Royce, the Briton Olley would go on to develop the chassis and suspension of the C1 Corvette.

This is a standard 1.8-liter MGB GT, but in V8 form the B was a popular unmarked car as few drivers expected a two-seater sports car to be on patrol. One of the forces that used unmarked MGB GT V8s was Britain’s Thames Valley Police, which now has a base in part on MG’s old factory at Abingdon, 10 miles south of the city of Oxford.

With a 2.9-liter V6 in the nose, the Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio packs a 510bhp punch that’s enough to take it all the way to 191mph with 0-62mph available in all of 3.9 seconds. We’d say that’s quite a rapid response vehicle.

When Datsun launched the 240Z in Japan in 1971 there were three options: the regular hatch, the 240Z-L and the 240Z-G, pepped up to give a top speed of 131mph. Given away by its faired-in headlights, this 240Z-G served as a patrol car with the Kanagawa Prefecture Highway Police from March 1972, since when it’s racked up 370,940km (232,000 miles).

This 1991 Camaro is still operated by the Michigan State Police and is located at its training academy at Dimondale. The cars were operated for high speed patrol duties, but this one is now in semi-retirement alongside a 1992 Ford Mustang and a 1995 Chevrolet Caprice.

With its hatchback configuration the 924 offered practicality like no previous Porsche had been able to. It might not have been the fastest car on the road with its 2.0-liter engine, but the 924 handled superbly and was capable of keeping up with faster cars driven in desperation by criminals who lacked the driver training of the traffic cops.

In the early 1960s Italy’s criminals were getting increasingly speedy cars and the police’s Alfa 1600 and 2600s could barely keep up. Famous Rome ‘flying squad’ officer Armando Spatafora somehow persuaded the city to stump up for a couple of Ferrari 250 GTEs to try and even the odds. Power came from a 3.0-liter Colombo V12 good for around 237bhp. Despite training from Ferrari itself, one officer sadly wrecked one of them within weeks, leaving just one survivor, which plied its trade until 1968.

It then passed into private ownership. Today it’s the only private car in Italy with permission to take to the roads equipped with a siren, blue light and “Squadra Volante” livery. It was put up for sale in 2020.

Have we got room for another Mustang? You bet. Florida-based tuning company Steeda Autosport has been supplying marked and unmarked police cars for more than 20 years. Launched in 2016, the company’s Ford Mustang Interceptor could be ordered with or without livery – and with or without a supercharger. In normally aspirated form the 5.0-liter V8 pumps out 497bhp – and with a Whipple supercharger bolted on this rises to a very fruity 788bhp.

Another high-speed Japanese police car, this time in the service of police in the Japanese province of Saitama, just north of Tokyo. It appears there’s only one in operation, sadly. The R34 was produced between 1999 and 2002, and is so celebrated that it’s widely known as ‘Godzilla’ – on account of its brutishly effective 2.6-liter twin turbo, good for 332bhp, 0-60 in 4.6sec and top speed of 156mph.

As all (non-police) cars in Japan are legally restricted to 112mph outside racetracks, this should be enough, we reckon.

The roads of France were notably lethal in the 1970s - over 14,000 people were to die on them in 1976. This compared to 3398 deaths in 2023, when the country had 31 million more people in it and many million more cars. To combat the dire situation in the ‘70s, the French police resolved to crack down on speeding, bad driving and calm the general carnage with cars like this A310.

The French gendarmerie took delivery of seven A310s in 1977, and at least two of them are still in the force's private museum collection. Power came from a 150bhp 2.7-liter V6, which gave a 137mph top speed. A total of 9276 V6 A310s were built between 1976 and 1984.

Britain’s Humberside Police were quick to jump on the opportunities offered by the Lexus IS F, a car first launched in 2007. The car offered a 5.0-liter engine good for 422bhp and a 168mph top speed, but for Autocar readers the most interesting fact is that this was we believe the first V8-engined car in full-time UK police operation since the glory days of the Rover SD1’s 3500.

And the V8 must have come in handy, as the car had to cart around heavy extra equipment including a computer, four-way camera system and two radios. It was a command car for the force’s vehicle crime unit.

The SD1 came in four- and six-cylinder forms and many British police forces used them for regular policing duties. But it was the 3.5-liter Buick-designed alloy V8 that was fitted to traffic division squad cars. It remains one of the country’s most-loved police cars, its hero status cemented by an event in May 1987:

One day two police Rover SD1 V8s were involved in a race against time to deliver a new liver organ donation from the runway at Stansted Airport, North East of London, to a desperately ill patient at a hospital in West London; police helicopters were grounded by discovery of a major engine fault.

Travelling down the M11 motorway at speeds of up to 120mph and then tearing through a heavily congested London on a Friday lunchtime, the 29-mile journey took just 31 minutes. The liver got to the hospital with just five minutes to spare; the patient was operated on, and she survived.

Dearborn may be famous as the hometown of the Ford Motor Company, but that doesn’t mean all the vehicles in its police department fleet bear a blue oval. No, the fleet also includes this Humvee. We don’t know the exact story of how it came to be in the fleet, but it’s likely that it’s ex-military.

A lot of surplus military equipment found its way to America’s police departments during the 2010s as it was no longer needed after widespread troop withdrawals from Iraq and Afghanistan. Shuttered by GM in 2010, the Hummer nameplate has put in a reappearance on a range of GMC EVs.

A favorite with Greater Manchester Police, one cop, now retired, reminisces: “The Capri was ahead of its time as a pursuit vehicle, nothing could lose them. Superb when it was dry, but when it was wet – oh my god! The back end always came round, if you gave it too much gas as you went into a corner. In winter we would frequently take out equipment and put sandbags in to keep the back-end down”.

Police forces across Europe used the Porsche 356 as a patrol car; these early Porsches were popular in Germany, Belgium and Holland, as well as Austria. This 356 was one of around 40 used by Dutch police. One of just three survivors, Bonhams sold it for a hefty €235k in October 2014.

In 2021 Alpine produced a bespoke version of its A110 sports car specifically for rapid-response teams of the French gendarmerie. This arm of the French police famously used the original A110 model back in 1966 as a rapid response vehicle.

Each A110 is kitted out with a bespoke emergency service livery, reflective front and rear decals and a blue flashing light on its roof. The cars are equipped with the same 1.8-litre four cylinder engine as the standard car, producing 252bhp and 236lb ft of torque. Inside, the model gains a host of specialist equipment, including a police radio and a bespoke. And it looks awesome…

Before the country’s police was unified, Scotland’s Northern Constabulary had the job of policing some of its most rural and rugged highlands and islands regions, including the tallest mountains to be found in the whole of the UK.

Previously equipped with elderly Snow Tracs, in 1982 the force took delivery of the Garron tracked ATV as pictured here. Records suggested it played a crucial role during the region’s often harsh winters, and assisted in many mountain rescues and assisting homeowners marooned by heavy snowfall. A cool machine indeed.

A genuine Group B rally hero, just 153 examples of the RS200 were built, each one packing a turbocharged BDA engine behind the cabin. Essex Police toyed with the idea of using RS200s as traffic cars, and we like to think they saw active service as a test for at least a short period, such is the immense cool factor of this car.

Not all police forces chose to go with Cosworth-tuned Fords; some decided to add different high-performance cars to their fleet. In the case of Humberside Police it was the Subaru Impreza Turbo that was the weapon of choice....

The Isle of Man, the UK crown dependency situated in the Irish sea, hosts the annual TT motorcycle race. It's a famously tough and dangerous race that takes place on public roads, and attracts bike fans from all the the world each summer.

In 2017, the local police took delivery of this 170mph 309bhp pocket supercar to try and keep order. Weighing just 580kg (1276 lb) and capable of 0-62mph in just 2.7 seconds, it’s perhaps the closest any road car gets to being a superbike. Its only driver has advanced-driver training, also rides a police motorcycle, and is also a collision investigator.

With a top speed of 12.5mph, the two-wheeled self-balancing Segway scooter would seem to be a strange choice of police ‘car’. However, Segway released a special i180 Police package back in 2005, and Chicago ordered 100 of them in 2006. Segway followed it up with a police version of the i2 follow-up model.

They have been used for urban patrols during the 2008 Beijing Olympics and are thought to be in use by over 100 police agencies worldwide for use in environments like pedestrianized city centers, college campuses, airports and shopping malls.

With 150mph potential and four-wheel drive to help get the prodigious power down, the Cosworth-tuned Sierra was exactly what police forces needed to keep up with villains who had ever faster and more sophisticated get-away vehicles.

As you've seen in this feature, EVs have started to be used by police forces in the past few years, as EVs have generally become more capable with the longer ranges that police patrol use often requires.

Several police forces in the UK have begun evaluation Ford's Mustang Mach-E Standard Range for police use. Promised performance of the new police car is startling: 0-62mph in 3.7sec and a top speed of 111mph. It's funny to think that one day nearly all police cars will be EVs, and we're just at the start of the process.

Famously engineered with the help of F1 star Ayrton Senna – whose McLaren race car was powered by Honda engines at the time – the mid-engined NSX remains one of Japan’s most celebrated sports cars. The NSX was sold as an Acura in North America, and this particular one was donated by Honda to the Tochigi Prefecture in central Japan and intended to chase modified street racing cars.

This first generation model was equipped with a 3.0-liter V6 which delivered 280bhp and a 168mhp top speed.

Not simply a PR stunt, the Gendarmerie’s Renault Megane RS is a common sight on French highways. Since 2011, Renault’s fastest and most powerful model has loaned its turbocharged four-cylinder engine to help law enforcement officials catch up to speeding drivers. The RS is certainly better suited to the job than a Peugeot Partner with a 90bhp turbodiesel engine, often the Gendarmerie’s usual ride these days. 

Sadly, its days may be numbered. An unverified report claims the RS fleet is too expensive to maintain so Gendarmes will instead employ some of the high-horsepower machines they seize to catch bad guys instead, along with the new A110 as already seen.

This car was first owned by Argentinian soccer star Ángel Di Maria. It seems a later owner – not connected with Di Maria - was a suspected drug dealer. Authorities in Portugal confiscated it in 2014 and instead of selling it as is usual, they decided to press the V8 supercar into service instead with the Polícia de Segurança Pública, a mostly urban police force.

After the Sierra RS Cosworth came the Cossie-powered Escort, a rally car homologation special which featured a turbocharged 233bhp 2.0-liter engine; top speed was 150mph. This one was run by Northumbria Police in northern England. A total of 7154 Escort Cosworths were built between 1992 and 1996, and survivors are increasingly valuable.

A Porsche. Check. A 911. Check. A cabriolet. Check check. Yup, this Dutch police car is a cracker. The country’s national guard – the Rijkspolitie (literally ‘National police’) – was tasked with policing the country’s nascent highway system in the 1960s, when they didn’t have speed limits, and needed fast cars to to it with.

It eventually bought 507 Porsches of various shapes and sizes, including this marvellous 911 964 Cabriolet. Sadly the force was abolished in 1993 and by the looks of things, the days of Dutch police Porsches are now behind us. Shame.

The previous Jimny was in production for nearly 20 years and pretty much had the market for tiny go-anywhere SUVs to itself in the markets it was sold in. A new model arrived in 2018 and was even tinier, but with funkier looks and a much-improved interior.

Hats off to Italy’s Carabineri for taking delivery of the model for its fleet, where it will doubtless come in handy in the numerous mountainous parts of the country. We hope they bought a few though; strict fleet emissions rules that its time on the European market was a very short one, sad to say. 

The first Porsche-badged cars were made in Austria, so it's perhaps fitting that the country's gendarmerie used the 911. As with the 356 that came before, the Dutch, Belgian, German and Austrian police all had 911s on their highway patrol fleets.

This 911T Targa is unusual in that it features a rear windscreen wiper; let's hope the third cop in the picture has his own transport; the 911 isn’t ideal for carrying three policeman-sized adults...

Like many police forces, those in the Czech Republic regularly confiscate smart cars bought by crooks with ill-gotten gains. They are usually sold and the proceeds returned to the government, but in this case this 2011 Ferrari, originally coloured red, was resprayed and converted into a police car for a cost of $11,000 or so in 2022.

The Czech authorities said that it will be used to chase stolen cars and curb illegal street racing – and only helmed by the forces most trusted and trained drivers. We reckon it would be an honour (almost) to be pulled over by such a vehicle… 

The SLK was a stylish and wildly popular cars at launch, but we can’t quite see why an SLK200 would find much to appeal to a police force. It only has two-seats, isn’t very fast, and has little carrying capacity for the kit most police cars cart around. Having said all that, we love it.

As this seems to be a one-off, as with other such cars in this story we can only assume it was confiscated from some unfortunate villain and press-ganged into more wholesome service.

Some police forces used the original Lotus Cortina and while the second take on Ford’s hot sedan never captured the imagination like its predecessor, the Cortina Lotus Mk2 is still a very lovely (and swift) thing with its 1.6-litre twin-cam Lotus engine.

Not all of Germany’s police were lucky enough to get into one of the V8-powered BMW sedans we saw earlier; most had to drive around in one of these titchy panda cars instead, with a 298cc two-cylinder engine. Fast, no. Notable, definitely.

The new Alpine A110 police car is pretty darned cool but... Autocar’s most interesting police car,  is still… the original Alpine A110. Not only do we love the car, but we also adore every aspect of this old school photo. The French Gendarmerie acquired a small number of A110s in 1966 when the government enacted strict speed limits and politely asked they be enforced as laws, not general suggestions.

The Gendarmerie deployed the A110 to catch speeding drivers who either hadn’t gotten the message or didn’t take it seriously. Power came from a 1296cc 4-cylinder engine, producing 125bhp. The lightness of the car - just 770kg (1694 lb)  - ensured sprightly performance for the time; 0-60mph took 8.2 seconds, with a top speed of 134mph. Probably annoyed by the coupe’s cramped cabin, the force later added Citroën SMs to its high-speed fleet in the early 1970s. The original A110 was produced between 1961 and 1977; 8201 examples were built. Renault acquired Alpine in 1973. 

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