Cops Drive Fords. Here's Why
DETROIT (CBS Detroit) When you're cruising around any metro Detroit freeway and spot bubble lights on a sleek dark ride, chances are you're looking at a quality Ford product.
Cops tend to drive a Ford.
But why?
Here's the answer from Tim Dees, a r
Police sedans need to be large cars. They need interior room for cops wearing lots of equipment, radios, video systems, and all sorts of other electronic gear, and so as to accommodate a prisoner cage and possibly special seating that is resistant to hiding contraband. They need heavy-duty suspensions, brakes, cooling, and electrical systems. They need to have largish trunks for carrying all the other field gear cops use on patrol.
Because there were (and still are) a lot of CVPIs (Crown Victoria Police Interceptors) in police service, aftermarket vendors made a lot of accessories for them. Agencies had many consoles, shotgun/rifle racks, emergency lights, computer mounts, and other items to choose from. For cars offered by other manufacturers, the selection was far more limited.
Crown Vics were refined over the years, and they got better with each iteration. Before long, they were what people recognized as a police car, and they held up well. Several agencies stocked up on CVPIs before Ford stopped selling them, and have a lot full of them, ready to be deployed as the cars currently in service wear out.
Eventually, about the only buyers of CVs and CVPIs were taxicab operators and law enforcement agencies, as America found favor over smaller vehicles with better gas mileage. That wasn't a big enough market to sustain a model. Now, Ford's primary police vehicles are the Interceptor and the Interceptor Utility, variants of the Taurus and Explorer, respectively.
The Interceptor and Interceptor Utility come standard with all-wheel drive, steel intrusion plates on the back of the front seats. Ford's 3.7-liter V6 producing 304 hp and 279 lb-ft is standard, while an available 3.5-liter EcoBoost V6 makes 365 hp and 350 lb-ft. The standard six-speed automatic has what Ford calls pursuit mode, automatically switching from normal/fuel-saving operation to pursuit mode when it detects aggressive driving situations.
"It then produces quicker upshifts and downshifts, returning to normal mode when it senses the aggressive driving is complete," according to autoweek.com.
Optional is surveillance mode technology that warns the driver when someone approaches the rear of the vehicle, and the driver's window automatically raises and all doors lock. Ford is the first manufacturer to bring this feature to market.
They're a crowd pleaser for a crowd that's tough to please: Ford says it has 61 percent market share in the first half of the year among law-enforcement agencies between its two police vehicles.
