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If there’s one thing that causes any driver to break into a cold sweat, it’s the sight of a cop car in the rear view mirror.
The problem is, most of the time it’s something completely unimaginative closing in; imagine how much more interesting it would be if the roads were patrolled by Porsche 911s, or Ford Mustangs, or Lamborghinis?
Well, believe it or not, the police have used all these cars, and a whole lot more, so cop a load of these. We’ve ranked them in order, working up to the police car we think is the world’s most interesting.
We’ve deliberately biased the ranking in favour of cars that were operational, rather than for promotional purposes, such as those involved in road safety campaigns. Let’s start off with the not-so-serious police cars but are still great to see in police livery:
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Brabus Rocket (Germany)
Badly modified cars can be lethal, which is why German tuning giant Brabus built this showcase for the police to show how it should be done. Not that everyone has the wherewithal to buy a luxury saloon with a 720bhp twin-turbo V12.
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Lotus Esprit (Britain)
It made sense for Norfolk Police to run a Lotus Esprit, which is built in the county. Sadly this wasn’t a fully operational police car – it was just used for public events in the mid-1990s.
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Porsche Panamera (Australia)
Porsche has lent New South Wales police a Panamera for road safety awareness; it’s not an operational car. it’s not the only Porsche either...
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Porsche 911 (991)(Australia)
...as Porsche has also loaned a 911 to the same force for promotional use. Which seems rather a waste as watching this screaming along at 150mph would be quite a sight.
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Ferrari 458 (Italy)
When a Mafia boss was convicted of terrorising Milanese residents, the police confiscated his 458 Spider and used it as a mobile billboard to promote the fact that crime doesn’t pay.
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BMW 428i (Germany)
There’s a big tuning culture in Germany, but not all cars are modified sensibly or legally. In a bid to encourage car owners to indulge in sensible upgrades there’s an ongoing campagn called Tune it! Safe! and one of the cars created for this is AC Schnitzer’s BMW 428i with an uprated 2.0-litre engine rated at 290bhp.
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Chevrolet Corvette (Germany)
An American muscle car might not seem like the obvious choice for a German traffic car but when patrolling the autobahns you need something seriously fast to keep up with the crims in their hypercars – and the 6.2-litre V8-powered Stingray is just the job. It was unveiled as part of the Tune it! Safe! campaign in 2016.
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VW Golf R (Germany)
Unveiled on 1 December 2017, the Golf R is the latest in the line of Tune it! Safe! cars. Tuned by Oettinger to pack a 400bhp punch, the tuned Golf R also features bigger brakes, an Oettinger body kit and 8.5 x 20 wheels from the same tuner.
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Lexus RC F (Australia)
This 467bhp V8-powered Lexus continues a theme used by police forces around the world: deck out a seriously fast and costly car in police livery to act as a way of improving road safety. In this case it was the southern region of the New South Wales force.
And now on to the police vehicles we’re that have seen active service, ranked in order of general coolness and nobility…, working our way up to our choice of the world's most interesting police car.
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68: Nissan Rui Qi (China)
Developed in China, the Nissan Rui Qi is an extended and raised SUV based on the first-generation Navara pickup truck. Its ungainly proportions give it an unusually large cabin, which makes it ideal for police duty. Some examples wear a Nissan emblem, like the one pictured here, while later models built by the Zhengzhou-Nissan joint-venture receive a look of their own with a brand-specific grille. Zhengzhou-Nissan continues to make the Rui Qi for various government services, including the Chinese postal service, and it even offers the model as an electric vehicle.
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67: Chevrolet Caprice PPV (USA)
America’s full-sized police cruiser now speaks with a pronounced Australian accent. General Motors wisely saw an opportunity to fill the void left by the Ford Crown Victoria but none of its American divisions manufactured a suitable vehicle. It asked Holden, its Australia-based brand, to provide a Chevrolet-badged version of the rear-wheel drive Caprice for US cops. The model was never sold to the general public in America, though used examples are beginning to arrive on auction lots. Production ended in October 2017 when Holden shut down its factory.
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66: Lada 2107 (Russia)
Russia’s mind-blowingly diverse fleet of police cars still includes the venerable Lada 2107. It’s a basic, time-tested model with Fiat roots that offers the very fundamentals of motoring and little else. The newest examples are approaching six years old so they’re increasingly getting replaced by more modern cars, but you don’t have to walk for very long in central Moscow to spot a 2107 still earning its keep.
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65: Wartburg 353W (East Germany)
While the West German police were driving their Audi 200s and BMW E28s, over in the German Democratic Republic the cops were piloting their rather less high-tech Wartburgs. The heaters were supposed to be pretty good though.
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64: Smart Fortwo (USA)
The New York City Police Department added the Smart Fortwo to its fleet in 2016. The tiny city car is one of the slowest models on the American market but it’s not used for high-speed chases so quickness is a moot point. It’s a traffic enforcement vehicle mostly used to issue parking tickets and make sure tourists don’t ride Segways into oncoming traffic. Several hundred blue and white examples of the Fortwo zig-zag across New York every day.
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63: Volkswagen Passat (China)
The Volkswagen Passat stands proud as one of the most popular police cars in China. For a while, the German firm concurrently sold three generations of the Passat in the world’s largest new car market and all of them transported law enforcement officials. The model pictured here is a Passat Lingyu. Squint at the roof line and you’ll notice it’s actually a first-generation Skoda Superb with a Volkswagen-specific design modified for and built in China.
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62: Volvo Amazon (Sweden)
The Volvo Amazon represented the Swedish police force’s best choice if it wanted a patrol car with a ‘made in Sweden’ label. In 1956, when the Amazon made its debut, rival Saab’s only mass-produced model was the two-door 96. Taking criminals to the police station would have involved cajoling them to squeeze between the front seat and the door pillar. The Amazon’s four-door layout and relatively spacious cabin made the task much simpler.
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61: Renault 4CV (France)
One of 75 4CVs built by Renault for Paris police, this is one of the first 15 cars built, with cut-down windows to enable guns to be fired at fleeing criminals. The auctioneer Bonhams sold this car in 2017, for €39,100 (£34,400 & US$45,700).
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60: Mercedes-Benz C220 CDI (Germany)
At first glance, there’s nothing noteworthy about this Mercedes-Benz C220 CDI. It’s precisely the type of vehicle you’d expect to pull you over in Germany in the early 2000s. It’s special because it’s one of the very first Polizei cars to receive the silver and green livery introduced in 2000. Mercedes notes Germany’s police force replaced white with silver to make its cars easier to sell after they retire and the green comes off. The example pictured here served on Stuttgart’s police force from 2000 to 2002. Police forces in Britain moved to buy only silver vehicles for the same reason over the past 15 years or so.
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59: Volkswagen Santana (China)
Closely related to the second-generation Passat from 1981, the Volkswagen Santana is China’s do-it-all car. It’s a private vehicle for anyone who needs to get from A to B, it’s immensely popular as a taxi in some parts of the country, it conveys military personnel on official missions and it’s also a police car. There are tens of thousands of Santanas in China’s police fleet but it’s becoming decreasingly common as it ages.
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58: Mercedes-Benz GLE63 AMG (Australia)
Now Holden has built its last car, the police in Victoria have no Australian-built muscle cars to choose from, which is why Mercedes stepped in with this GLE63 AMG, on 12 months’ approval. You wouldn’t want to mess with it...
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57: Mercedes-Benz E43 AMG (Australia)
Already the GLE63 loan period has come to an end and this is its replacement – a 395bhp super-saloon with a twin-turbo 3.0-litre V6. It’s not as menacing as the GLE but you still wouldn’t want to get in its way.
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56: Nissan Leaf (Switzerland)
It’s not always about speed; sometimes police forces just want to have a presence to deter criminals. The police in Geneva run this Leaf in a bid to improve local air quality; they’re joined by forces in the UK, Portugal, North America, Germany and others.
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55: Alfa Romeo Giulia Ti by Colli (Italy)
Alfa Romeo couldn’t, or wouldn’t, turn the Giulia into a station wagon so Milan-based coachbuilder Colli stepped up to the challenge. As it had done in the 1950s with the 101-series Giulia, Colli married performance and practicality by adding a D-pillar, a longer roof and a hatch. Buyers could choose to have a third window added on each side but many asked for sheet metal instead.
The Giulia wagon fulfilled the needs of the Italian police force, Alfa Romeo dealers in Europe and, with a tinge of irony, the company’s very own racing department. The Italian firm didn’t enter the wagon segment until it introduced the two-door Alfasud Giardinetta in 1975. Its first factory-built four-door wagon, the 33 Giardinetta, came in 1984.
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54: BMW i8 (Czech Republic)
When BMW lent a brand spanking new i8 to police in the Czech Republic the force had six months or 20,000km to work out whether or not it was for them. But just a month into the loan the car was crashed when its driver suffered “a medical emergency” at the wheel.
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53: MGA (Britain)
The MGA carried on where the T-Series left off, in 1955. This shot from 1959 shows Lancashire Police showing off its 18 new MGAs, which were driven only by police drivers trained in the art of roadcraft.
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52: MG TC (Britain)
British police forces were investing in vehicles at a great rate by the 1930s, but as more cops started to drive as part of their job, the number of accidents involving policemen escalated quickly. The solution was to set up the police driver training school at Hendon in north London which opened in 1934, using cars like the MG T-Series, although this TC is from 1947.
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51: Alfa Romeo Alfasud (Italy)
Until recently the Italians were the biggest supporters of their own car industry, and when you’ve got fabulously fun cars from Alfa Romeo it’s easy to see why. Sure it may have been made from water-soluble steel, but the Alfasud was one of the greatest driver’s car of its day – a true hot hatch with its zesty overhead-cam engine. But despite the silhouette, there was no hatchback until 1980.
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50: Audi TT (Hungary)
When the original Audi TT hit the market it was just the job for Hungarian traffic police who needed to keep up with tearways in their high-performance German cars. Power came from Audi’s 1.8T engine rather than the 3.2 V6.
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49: BMW i3 (USA)
Compact, agile and very frugal, the BMW i3 has been adopted by numerous police forces around the globe for work in urban environments. This is one of 100 electric i3s ordered by the Los Angeles police, for urban patrols.
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48: Nissan 370Z (Japan)
You won’t find many foreign marques being used as police cars in Japan; the domestic producers see it as a great honour to work with the law enforcement agencies. To that end Nissan produced three Nismo-spec 370Zs for Tokyo police, each one powered by a 350bhp engine.
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47: Brabus G-Wagen (Dubai)
Dubai for many years has had a range of eyebrow-raising police vehicles in use. And although the publicity for the emirate is doubtless welcome, all of them are in operational use. In this case, a regular Mercedes G-Wagen obviously wouldn’t be good enough, which is why they’ve got a Brabus-tuned edition instead. The 690bhp 700 Widestar should be just the job for tackling sand dunes at speed.
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46: Hummer H2 (USA)
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-litre V8 to produce 700bhp and 667lb ft of torque – and to fit 28-inch wheels to make sure the car was as uncomfortable as it was fast.
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45: BMW 501 (Germany)
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.
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44: Spyker (Netherlands)
Holland doesn’t have much of a home-grown car industry but it does have Spyker. The company delivered one of its C8 Spyders to the Flevoland Police, complete with Audi-sourced 4.2 V8, for traffic duties.
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43: BMW 530d Touring (Germany)
Unveiled at this year’s Frankfurt motor show was this 530d xDrive Touring, developed by BMW specially for police use. Tucked away in a corner of the stand, BMW hasn’t revealed any technical details but we suspect the car has been tweaked a bit to give more than the regular 265bhp and 457lb ft of torque.
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42: Jaguar MkII (Britain)
Villians often stole high-performance saloons for their getaways and the cops needed something that could catch up. The Jaguar MkII in 3.4 or 3.8-litre guise was just the job.
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41: Land Rover Discovery (Italy)
The Italian Carabinieri’s fleet contains numerous types of SUVs. Officers use Land Rover’s Defender and Discovery models in the Alps, especially during the winter months, but it’s not rare to spot them in urban areas. They’re also popular on the islands of Sardinia and Sicily, where the pavement often crumbles into a trail with little prior notice.
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40: Nissan GTR (Dubai)
Several police forces around the world have a Nissan GT-R or two on their fleets; this one is part of the roster of highway patrol cars in Abu Dhabi. It sits alongside a Rolls-Royce Phantom, Chevrolet Camaro and something a bit special that we’ll show you later...
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39: Rover P6 3500 S (Britain)
Rover offered 2.0 and 2.2-litre 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 motorway performance. It was normally painted white, but the odd Zircon Blue car featured like this one. What’s interesting about this particular car? It’s armour plated, weighs 2 tons (4400 lb), and between 1973 and 1987 ferried around VIPs including members of the royal family and then-prime minister Margaret Thatcher. We hope they travelled light; much of the boot was taken up with high-powered radio equipment.
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38: Alfa Romeo Giulietta (Italy)
These stylish saloons may have been powered by a twin-cam engine that displaced a mere 1290cc, but there was still a top speed of almost 100mph on offer.
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37: Lamborghini Huracan (Italy)
The Italian state 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 Huracan, often used for carrying donated organs in a refrigerated compartment in the nose.
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36: Volvo V90 (Sweden)
In 1929, just two years after its sold its first car, Volvo started providing cars to the Swedish police. The company’s latest V90 is (predictably) the most capable cop car yet. It achieved the highest ever score in official tests – a stonking 9.2 out of 10 for braking, handling and high-speed driving.
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35: Lamborghini Aventador (Dubai)
Another car that makes up part of the Dubai Police fleet is this Lamborghini Aventador LP700-4, which sits alongside a BMW i8, Audi R8 V10 and McLaren MP4-12C.
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34: BMW 530d - unmarked (Germany)
While the 5-Series is a favourite of police force in the UK and Germany, it’s often in unmarked form. And we reckon unmarked police vehicles of virtually any sort are inherently interesting. The 530d is the perfect covert car as it’s fast and can keep up with pretty much anything, yet it blends into the background among all those other 5-Series so beloved of sales reps.
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33: Volkswagen Beetle (Germany)
Another German police car favourite was the Volkswagen Beetle, which was to be seen in towns and cities nationwide. In 1970 Volkswagen tried to get UK police forces to adopt the Beetle as their urban patrol car of choice – but they chose to stick with British marques instead.
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32: Land Rover Range Rover (Britain)
Capable of pulling a fully laden truck out of the way, 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.
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31: Jaguar F-Type (USA)
Each year the US-based dealership chain Elder Automotive Group dedicates a car to a fallen police officer and in 2014 a Jaguar F-Type S V8 was donated to the City of Hazel park Police in memory of Deputy Sheriff Grant Whittaker who was killed in a car crash while pursuing a criminal.
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30: Porsche 918 Spyder (Dubai)
When you’re chasing people who drive some of the fastest cars ever created, you need a pretty sensational set of wheels yourself. That’s why the police in Dubai have cars like an Aston Martin One-77, Bentley Continental GT and this Porsche 918 Spyder at their disposal.
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29: Ford F-150 Police Responder (USA)
America’s best-selling vehicle, the Ford F-150, is also the country’s first and only pursuit-rated pickup truck. In Police Responder trim, the F-150 receives upgraded brakes, all-terrain tires and a 3.5-liter V6 engine that provides 375hp, enough for officers to hit 100mph. Watch your rear-view mirror: it’s scheduled to enter service in the spring of 2018.
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28: Bugatti Veyron (Dubai)
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.
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27: Daimler SP250 (Britain)
London's Metropolitan Police bought a big batch of these two-seater glassfibre-bodied sports cars in the early '60s for its traffic division. With each one powered by an incredibly flexible 2.5-litre V8, they were just the job for catching villains in their increasingly fast saloons.
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26: Triumph TR4 (Britain)
As well as being capable of keeping up with the crims, many police forces used open-topped sports cars for the PR value of high-visibility patrols. Southend-on-Sea Constabulary ran this solitary TR4 from 1962.
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25: Lykan Hypercar (Abu Dhabi)
Anything Dubai can do, fellow emirate Abu Dhabi can do better, which is why the latter has added a Lykan Hypersport to its armoury. With just seven of these cars made, at a whopping $3.4m apiece, the Hypersport isn’t your average traffic car...
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24: MGB (Britain)
This is a standard 1.8-litre 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 Thames Valley, which is now based in part on MG’s old factory at Abingdon in Oxfordshire.
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23: Alfa Romeo Giulia QV (Italy)
It may have just a 2.9-litre V6 in the nose, but the Alfa Romeo Giulia QV 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.
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22: Alpine A310 (France)
The roads of France were notably lethal in the 1970s - over 14,000 people were to die on them in 1976, against 3469 in 2016 - and the French police resolved to crack down on speeding and bad driving 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 2.7-litre V6, good for 148bhp.
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21: Datsun 240Z (Japan)
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).
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20: Porsche 924 (Germany)
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-litre 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.
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19: Citroen SM (France)
The French gendarmerie is a part of the military which has jurisdiction over the civilian population. As well as better guns, it seems they got better cars too - the wonderful Citroën SM was added to its high-speed fleet (named ‘brigade rapide d’intervention,’ French for ‘rapid intervention brigade’) in the early 1970s. The car was equipped with a Maserati V6, with upwards of 168hp.
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18: Volkswagen Polizei-Cabriolet (Germany)
Called Type 18A internally, the Volkswagen Polizei-Cabriolet was a Beetle-based creation made specifically for the German police. Mechanically, it shared virtually all of its components with the regular-production Beetle, including its 25hp flat-four engine. Volkswagen reinforced the chassis to compensate for the lack of doors and a roof. German coachbuilder Hebmüller built approximately 482 examples of the Type 18A alongside the two-door Beetle cabriolet it manufactured for civilians.
Other coachbuilders performed similar conversions in the early 1950s.
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17: Ford Mustang Interceptor (USA)
US 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-litre V8 pumps out 490bhp – and with a Whipple supercharger bolted on this rises to a very fruity (and conveniently rounded) 777bhp.
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16: Rover SD1 (Britain)
The SD1 came in four- and six-cylinder forms and many forces used them for regular policing duties. But it was the 3.5-litre V8-equipped version in motorway and traffic division squad cars that were the King of the British road in the 1980s. Later, the police even used a few top-of-the-range Vitesse models, but these were debadged lest anyone think they were a waste of taxpayers' money.
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15: Porsche 911 (993)(Germany)
Porsche built its one millionth car on 15 July 1996. The company donated the milestone car, a 993-series 911 Carrera, to Germany’s police department. The coupe spent years chasing speeding cars down the speed-restricted sections of the Autobahn before retiring and joining Porsche’s collection. Today, it’s displayed in the company’s museum on the outskirts of Stuttgart.
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14: Ford Capri 2.8i (Britain)
A favourite 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”.
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13: Porsche 356 (Netherlands)
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.
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12: Mitsubishi Evo X (Britain)
South Yorkshire Police added an Evo X to its fleet, alongside Evo VIII and IX editions of Mitsubishi’s rally car for the road. Surefooted, fast and capable of seating five, the Evo was surely the ultimate traffic car.
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11: Ford RS200 (Britain)
A genuine Group B rally hero, just 153 examples of the RS200 were built, each one packing a 250-hp 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 for at least a few hours, such is the immense cool factor of this car.
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10: Ford Focus RS (Britain)
Talking of the RS200, Ford dipped a toe in the water at the end of 2016, by producing a Focus RS-based police car concept. It was built to show what’s possible, but limited production of the Focus RS meant few cop-spec examples would ever be produced. We’d like to think that a few were made though.
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9: Subaru Impreza (Britain)
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....
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8: Ford Sierra RS Cosworth (Britain)
With 150mph potential and four-wheel drive to help get the prodigious 217bhp 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.
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7: Renault Megane RS (France)
No 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 90hp turbodiesel engine, the Gendarmerie’s other car of choice these days.
Renault will release a brand-new Megane RS in the coming months, but the Gendarmerie might not renew its order. An earlier (and unverified) report claims the RS fleet is too expensive to maintain so Gendarmes will instead employ some of the high-horsepower machines they confiscate to catch bad guys.
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6: Ford Escort RS Cosworth (Britain)
After the Sierra RS Cosworth came the Cossie-powered Escort, a rally car homologation special which featured a turbocharged 230bhp 2-litre engine, driving all four wheels. It may have resembled an Escort on the outside, but underneath was the chassis of its Sierra RS Cosworth predecessor. This one was run by Northumbria Police in northern England.
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5: Dodge Viper (USA)
When the driver of this 2000 Dodge Viper tried to evade the police in Plainfield, Illinois, by driving at 127mph in a 35mph zone, he failed. The cops confiscated his car and added it to their Highway Patrol fleet.
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4: Porsche 911 Targa (Austria)
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 and let's hope the third cop in the picture has his own transport; the 911 isn’t ideal for carrying three policeman-sized adults...
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3: Ford Cortina Lotus Mk2 (Britain)
Some police forces used the original Lotus Cortina and while the second take on Ford’s hot saloon 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.
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2: BMW Isetta (Germany)
Not all of Germany’s police were lucky enough to get into one of the V8-powered BMW saloons we saw earlier; most had to drive around in one of these titchy panda cars instead, with a 298cc two-cylinder engine. Fast, no. Interesting, definitely.
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1: Alpine A110 (France)
And Autocar’s most interesting police car is… the Alpine A110. The French Gendarmerie acquired a small number of them in the late 1960s when the government instated strict speed limits and politely asked they be enforced as laws, not ballpark suggestions. The Gendarmerie deployed the A110 to catch speeding drivers who either hadn’t gotten the message or didn’t take it seriously. And this photo is kinda awesome too.
Now we just need Les Flics to start using the re-born A110, which we think is a totally cracking car.
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