Now THIS is a REAL cop car! 69 Polara.

[TheGhost]

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/Dodge-POLARA-POLICE-1969-69-CALIFORNIA-HIGHWAY-PATROL-CHARGER-440-MAG-CHP_W0QQcmdZViewItemQQcategoryZ6210QQitemZ4621888105QQrdZ1

All I can say is, I want one.

[Charger Aficionado]

Big Pimpin'.  Cool Ride, I gotta print the pix for my CHP buddy...

[6670charger]

Absolutely!!!!!!!!  That would be a great Cruiser.

[tan top]

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/Dodge-POLARA-POLICE-1969-69-CALIFORNIA-HIGHWAY-PATROL-CHARGER-440-MAG-CHP_W0QQcmdZViewItemQQcategoryZ6210QQitemZ4621888105QQrdZ1

All I can say is, I want one.

i think it was the best cop car made in my opinion  , 69 44O Magnum persuit  polara, is one Bad Ass ride   

[The Ghoul]

I love polaras
Its kinda like the forgoten mopar.
I also was a big fan of the diplomats 

[Sublime/Sixpack]

I'm impressed with that car!
It makes me wish I'd kept the '68 Polara Ex-highway Patrol car I once had. I never really thought old police cruisers like that would be worth anything.

Hmmmm? Maybe I should hang onto my '82 Diplomat ex-cruiser.

[BigBlackDodge]

Didn't those cars top out at 140 mph?

BBD

[MOPARHOUND!]

Retired Kansas Highway Patrol said the best patrol car he ever drove was the 1970 Dodge. 

Only problem they had was after 20 minutes or more of running 110-120mph  on the turnpike they would want to overheat, Ha Ha.

[Paladin]

     Those '69 CHP spec Polara 440s were supposed to top out close to 150 MPH, as long as they were running in slick top configuration (no overheads).  Some folks consider them to be the best ever built, but others (like myself) tend to vote for the 1978 Monaco A38/E86s.  They handled better and had better brakes, plus they could run wide open for mile after mile due to better trans and engine coolers.  Plus, they were the last of the breed.   Within a couple of years, all we could get our hands on were 318 4V Diplomats and Furys.  Oh, how the mighty had fallen. 

     And though it was a Chevrolet, there are others that consider the 1994 Caprice 9C1 LT1 the best pursuit car ever made.  Though not as rugged as the old Mopars, they were excellent handling automobiles that were a joy to drive at high speeds.  I have hammered on one for miles on end wide open in a pursuit with speeds at nearly 150 MPH and it never bobbled.  The only time they were likely to heat up was when they were idling, rather than running with your foot buried to the floor. 

May God bless America,
Paladin

[Paladin]

Here's a pic of a former CHP unit I recently picked up.  It is a 1978 Monaco A38/E86 and the engine has been redone with headers, a true dual exhaust system with no cats, a Holley carb and a slightly warmer camshaft.  It has also had the suspension, brakes and rear end refurbished.  Yes, it still has the CHP dual whip antennas from "back in the day" along with the dual spotlamps, cage and the pushbars are in the trunk.  When I started messing around under the hood, I found red and blue lamps still behind the grille.

May God bless America,
Paladin

[Paladin]

These little jewels were a hot ticket when you are working rural Interstate and the high rollers are out.  Not much fun when the pavement ends, though, and they were the most fragile patrol unit I ever crawled into.  A lot of them were wrecked, mostly by troops who should have never been issued them.  More horsepower than quotient of experience/skills is bad ju-ju.

May God bless America,
Paladin

[TheGhost]

The 78 Monaco was 440 powered, I'm assuming?

[tan top]

thanks for the information & your views  Paladin ,intresting stuff. i remember reading about police spec 440 monaco's a wile back, every thing was heavy duty, and  they had  extra  oil coolers for the trans , power steering and engine oil.

[The Ghoul]

These little jewels were a hot ticket when you are working rural Interstate and the high rollers are out.  Not much fun when the pavement ends, though, and they were the most fragile patrol unit I ever crawled into.  A lot of them were wrecked, mostly by troops who should have never been issued them.  More horsepower than quotient of experience/skills is bad ju-ju.

May God bless America,
Paladin

LS-1 camero z-28, most likely super charged
would run down just about any thing on the road
except for a 409 camero z-28 running twin turbo..
back ends are wayyyy to light so they would snap and change direction at the drop of the hat, usualy when the front end is still trying to go streight.
I was always intrested in seeing how one of these units would stack up agenst its japaneese counterpart.
Mazda RX-7 with an mini 8cylinder insted of the rotary running a twin turbo set up. 

[John_Kunkel]

I've been tempted to bid on some of the restored CHP cars but they won't let us drive them on the street in the PRK so they're destined to be trailer queens only.

Those cars were really common around here back in the day, I live in the Sacramento area and the used units were sold at the CHP academy here. Many of my friends bought them and they were fast.

Interesting point on the '69, the cars delivered to mountain patrol areas had 3.23 gears, the flatland cars had 2.76 gears. The flatland cars would easily top 140 mph measured by a fifth wheel.

[rt green]

where i work, theres a big parking lot with other buisneses towards the west. in the group of cars, there's a blues brothers replica 74 monaco cop car. this thing is done up right! the thing i dont like is the stupid speaker on the top. other than that, its got the faded numbers on the side, i mean this thing looks like the real thing!!!! i couldnt even replicated this thing this good, even if i had a large wallet. i havent asked about it or anything but i've been thinking about getting some pics for you guys. the thing hasnt moved for a long time.  i'll check it out for the hell of it. i mean the movie wasnt all that great.     bruce

[Paladin]

The Ghost,

Yes, the '78 Monaco was the E86 version, which was the 440 Magnum.  A lot of people don't know that at different times, you could get a police spec vehicle with a Slant Six or 318.  There were also two different 440s offered on occasion for police spec vehicles, the regular 440 or the 440 Magnum.  Of course, Plymouth called theirs the 440 Super Commando and Chrysler called theirs the T-N-T (they also had a pursuit package occasionally that was dubbed "The Enforcer". 

Back to the '69 Dodge Polara, the pursuit package was checked at 147 MPH during testing with the 3.23 rear end, which made it the fastest pursuit unit ever built until the Caprice 9C1/LT1 and the Camaro B4Cs.  The fastest Caprice of those years was checked at 149 MPH and the fastest Camaro checked in at 163 MPH.  I can vouch for those numbers in personal units that I have had in the past (the Caprices had a fuel shutoff dialed into the computer at 149). 

When you think about it, that was quite a feat in 1969.  It was before overdrives and the typical Ma Mopar cop car had the aerodynamics of an Arkansas outhouse.  For those who might be interested, the early 440 cop motors had a bad habit of blowing up at first.  The culprit turned out to be that the engine would wind so tight that all the available oil was sucked out of the standard passenger car sump and into the lifter valley and heads.  She went KABLOOYEE at that point.  They started putting larger sumps in them with better windage trays and that solved the problem. 

Speaking of the '78 Monaco A38/E86, the "official" top speed as tested was around 133 MPH.  But every old hand I ever knew said theirs would run close to 150.  After some serious questioning about this discrepancy, I learned that it was very common to ditch the cats and have the local Dodge house recurve the distributor by chunking the heavy spring in the centrifigal advance.  Then they would bump the timing up a couple of degrees.  And since the Thermoquad was not very well understood, a lot of them were removed and replaced with Holley 750s.  Voila!  Big increase on the big end.  Nowadays they would have a cow down in Austin if you messed with a patrol car that way. 

Thought some of you might be wondering just how many units I have either owned or been issued. They were in order:

1972 Plymouth Fury III 400-4V
1978 Dodge Monaco A38/E86
1984 Ford Crown Victoria 351 VV
1984 Ford Mustang 5.0
1986 Dodge Diplomat 318-4V
1987 Ford Mustang 5.0
1989 Dodge Diplomat 318-4V
1993 Chevrolet Caprice 9C1
1995 Chevrolet Caprice 9C1 LT1
1994 Chevrolet Caprice 9C1 LT1
2001 Ford Crown Victoria P71
2002 Chevrolet Camaro B4C LS1
2003 Ford Crown Victoria P71
2005 Ford Crown Victoria P71

That's not counting the many others that I have borrowed, tested, run hard, or worked out of.

May God bless America,
Paladin

[tan top]

thanks again for information Paladin ,more fascinating stuff .

[Crazy Larry]

This looks like one of 'em here.

[MassCharger73]

   rt Green, I must disagree that the Blues Brothers movie was not that great. Great music, great car chases and what I consider to be some classic movie quotes. For instance, " It's going to be hard to eat corn on the cob with no f***ing teeth." I mean come on, does it get any better ? 

[TheGhost]

Crazy Larry, that's definatly not a Polara, but a cool car nonetheless.

[Mike DC]

         
A LOT  of the late 70's CHP cars were sold to Warner Bros at the end of their police-car lives so that Roscoe & Enos could wreck them.  And more of them went to shows like "The A-team" and "Knight Rider" and "Hunter," etc.
 
The stunt crews had a lot of good things to say about the durability & speed of those old cop cars, which apparently often gave the "hero" cars like the General Lees & Trans Ams a real run for their money.

-----------------------------------------------------------

In the TV shows you could sometimes spot the holes drilled in the dashboards for stuff, and black paint was usually still visible on the inside of the cars' doorjambs & trunklids.

             

[rt green]

ok, mass charger, the movie was'nt that bad.  it held my intrest. the good thing was the chevy cop cars couldnt catch the mopar ones. that in my book was the real deal.

[topduarte]

These little jewels were a hot ticket when you are working rural Interstate and the high rollers are out.  Not much fun when the pavement ends, though, and they were the most fragile patrol unit I ever crawled into.  A lot of them were wrecked, mostly by troops who should have never been issued them.  More horsepower than quotient of experience/skills is bad ju-ju.

May God bless America,
Paladin

LS-1 camero z-28, most likely super charged
would run down just about any thing on the road
except for a 409 camero z-28 running twin turbo..
back ends are wayyyy to light so they would snap and change direction at the drop of the hat, usualy when the front end is still trying to go streight.
I was always intrested in seeing how one of these units would stack up agenst its japaneese counterpart.
Mazda RX-7 with an mini 8cylinder insted of the rotary running a twin turbo set up. 

The LS1 Camaro cop cars were just Z28's in disguise (wolf in sheep's clothing as GM put it in 1991 when the first B4C camaro came out).  they were not supercharged or anything addded at the factory unless the local police dept. wanted to fix theirs up which some did.

I had a 02 6-speed z28 and it was a little squirrel when you floored it.  All it took was time and practice on what it could do or not!!

[Lightning]

Crazy Larry, that's definatly not a Polara, but a cool car nonetheless.

it's a Polara, just the '74 model.