Why is Ford giving the boot to the "panthers" ???

[Garak]

Originally Posted By: d00df00d
Ford is claiming that the Taurus-based police interceptor is MORE durable and reliable than the CVPI.


I guess we have to wait and see. That's not a claim that's liable to either bite them in the rump or be shown as true for a number of years.

 

[SteveSRT8]

Originally Posted By: Miller88
Personally, I would feel much better with the LEOs driving GM or Ford vehicles. If my life is on the line in a sticky situation, I wan't them driving something reliable ... NOT a Chrylser product.

The Chargers will go and turn and stop a lot better than the Vic, that's for sure. Where they fall short, IMO, is reliailty and durability ... and you can't see anything out of them.

There's a lot to be said for body on frame .. it'll take hitting a pothole at 65 or doing a PIT or taking a hit a lot better than unibody. The solid rear axle will hold up a bit better too.

Plus, Chrysler products are complete unreliable pieces of garbage.


Man, you are a sadly misinformed individual. Do you remember when all any LEO drove was a Dodge? Do you know they were UNIBODY?

Ignorant posts like this add nothing to the discussion. It's extremely obvious you have some sort of axe to grind. Why don't you get over it?

 

[SwampSurvivor]

The accelerated tests that Ford puts on the car in their labs aren't real world. We'll see.

There's no doubt that it can out perform - start, stop and turn better than the crown vic. Probably will get better fuel mileage.

They should make the column shift option available on the civilian versions!

Originally Posted By: SteveSRT8
Originally Posted By: Miller88
Personally, I would feel much better with the LEOs driving GM or Ford vehicles. If my life is on the line in a sticky situation, I wan't them driving something reliable ... NOT a Chrylser product.

The Chargers will go and turn and stop a lot better than the Vic, that's for sure. Where they fall short, IMO, is reliailty and durability ... and you can't see anything out of them.

There's a lot to be said for body on frame .. it'll take hitting a pothole at 65 or doing a PIT or taking a hit a lot better than unibody. The solid rear axle will hold up a bit better too.

Plus, Chrysler products are complete unreliable pieces of garbage.


Man, you are a sadly misinformed individual. Do you remember when all any LEO drove was a Dodge? Do you know they were UNIBODY?

Ignorant posts like this add nothing to the discussion. It's extremely obvious you have some sort of axe to grind. Why don't you get over it?




Unibody back then was different than unibody now. Today's unibodies are too highly stressed for any sort of severe duty as far as I am concerned. A "uni-frame" like my Cherokee has is a lot different than the unibody on my Focus.

I'm assuming you're referring to the Diplomats that made their way to police duty? I'd much rather have one of those than what Chrysler is putting out today.

What's ignorant? The fact that Chrysler makes poor quality vehicles or the fact that one can't see jack out of the rear of the Charger with the high belt line?

 

[SteveSRT8]

What's ignorant is your insistence that all Chrysler's are junk.

It's simply not true.

Keep the rant going, though. It's very entertaining!

 

[TC]

Yeah, Chryslers must be junk. After all, Mercedes (owner from 1998-2007) has been building Yugo-class rustbuckets for a century, correct? So it stands to reason that recent Chryslers would be "junk," and built to Yugo-class quality standards. Makes perfect sense. Even Charlie Sheen agrees -- he told me so last night after he took a few hits off a crack pipe.

 

[SS1970chrysler]

While I can't speak for the later models, my '70 Newport has been an excellent car for a very long time.

 

[PsycoBob]

Originally Posted By: TC
Just an anecdotal observation here, but a while back I asked a 40-50 yr old California Highway Patrol officer how he liked his new Charger cruiser, and he made it clear he preferred it to the Crown Vic, complimenting the handling and performance. As for the Vic, he said, "Compared to the Charger, the Ford's a dumptruck." I assumed by that that he meant the Vic was essentially a modified grandpa's car posing as a highway racer, while the Charger was the real thing, at least in his eyes. One cop's opinion. It appears the CHP will be switching mainly to new Ford Expedition (Explorer??) SUV cruisers, rather than the Chargers, the latter of which the CHP has a modest number of. Their main reasoning is ROOM. Apparently they liked the Vic's roominess, both inside and in the trunk. Hence, their moving to SUVs. My standard, puzzled response whenever I recall that is, "What the heck are they carrying? Lumber?!!"


Last I'd checked, Ford had a nice decal on the Explorer's built for police usage- says 'Not a pursuit vehicle.' Seems a high center of gravity and any kind of a turn kills you. Go figure. We just had a trooper die recently in a police SUV from a low-speed single-vehicle crash. Trooper was doing a u-turn, presumaby to go after a traffic violator.

Explorers & Suburbans are intended for support use- not driving at 105mph or going around corners fast.

 

[d00df00d]

The new Explorer is the first to be useable as a pursuit vehicle. It'll never handle as competently as a car, but it's at least much safer for pursuit use than the previous ones.

 

[HerrStig]

Originally Posted By: SteveSRT8
Originally Posted By: Miller88
Personally, I would feel much better with the LEOs driving GM or Ford vehicles. If my life is on the line in a sticky situation, I wan't them driving something reliable ... NOT a Chrylser product.

The Chargers will go and turn and stop a lot better than the Vic, that's for sure. Where they fall short, IMO, is reliailty and durability ... and you can't see anything out of them.

There's a lot to be said for body on frame .. it'll take hitting a pothole at 65 or doing a PIT or taking a hit a lot better than unibody. The solid rear axle will hold up a bit better too.

Plus, Chrysler products are complete unreliable pieces of garbage.


Man, you are a sadly misinformed individual. Do you remember when all any LEO drove was a Dodge? Do you know they were UNIBODY?

Ignorant posts like this add nothing to the discussion. It's extremely obvious you have some sort of axe to grind. Why don't you get over it?


I don't remember anything but Ford or Chevy around here.

 

[SteveSRT8]

^^^Poke poke, stir, wish for more....

 

[Shannow]

Originally Posted By: Miller88
Unibody back then was different than unibody now.


By a long, long way, for sure.

Originally Posted By: Miller88
Today's unibodies are too highly stressed for any sort of severe duty as far as I am concerned.


Given that the rigidity of a unibody family car has been increasing year after year, and given any even rudimentary understanding of the laws of physics, that argument is patently wrong.

Modern cars twist less, bend less, and Hookes' Law defines that less deformation HAS to be less stress.

These days, they just put the metal where it can actually do some good, rather than make it heavy, with a spot weld every half foot or so.

http://www.arro.org.au/_dbase_upl/iRescue_GM_Holden_24Jul10.pdf

Originally Posted By: Miller88
What's ignorant?


Hooke's Law...google it.

 

[Shannow]

BTW, the strength of the "ultra high strength" steel in the holden presentation is about that (better actually) of an unbrako 10.9 fastener, versus regular rebar in the 1970/80s.

 

[Spazdog]

Originally Posted By: HerrStig

I don't remember anything but Ford or Chevy around here.


Weren't a big fan of Adam 12, were you?
All the cruisers were AMC Ambassadors

When I was younger, all the cop cars were Dodge Diplomats. You could always see the cops coming at night. Placing the parking lights above the headlights wasn't very stealthy.

If you and your hormonally challenged buddies were doing something stupid, like launching tennis balls over a neighborhood in a homemade tennis ball cannon, you could see the Diplomat coming and scatter in all directions leaving the cop to wonder, "Alright, which one of these dumb kids do I chase?"

Dallas had all kinds of cop cars. Not just Chevrolets and Fords. Intrepids, Magnum station wagons...etc...

 

[HerrStig]

Originally Posted By: Spazdog
C'mon. The platform originated around 1980.

3 decades. Find me anything else out there that is currently using a platform developed in the '70s!

And that may have something to do with why they are so popular. They drive like cars used to drive.

Now as far as law-enforcement? Cops can be odd-ducks. Like the motor-jocks. They like to have their seats sprung independantly of the motorcycle. That always felt weird to me. Especially cornering. It does not inspire a great deal of confidence. But that's the way cop-cycles look and that's the way cop-cycles ride so that's the way cop-cycles are. Doesn't matter if the BMW does everything twice and better or not. It doesn't have a springy seat so it is not fit for duty.
I see law enforcement doing the same with the CVPI. This is the way a cop-car looks, this is the way a cop-car drives, and this is the way a cop-car works so don't try to bring them anything that you think works better/more efficiently/quicker/faster/etc... they don't want it.

Lots of BM's used as police bikes in Europe.

 

[dmark]

Tool and Die parts wear out so the assembly line may not be as capable of producing quality much longer. Without a larger market it does not pay to redesign and retool so law enforcement has to make do with what is available.

 

[Spazdog]

Originally Posted By: HerrStig
Originally Posted By: Spazdog
C'mon. The platform originated around 1980.

3 decades. Find me anything else out there that is currently using a platform developed in the '70s!

And that may have something to do with why they are so popular. They drive like cars used to drive.

Now as far as law-enforcement? Cops can be odd-ducks. Like the motor-jocks. They like to have their seats sprung independantly of the motorcycle. That always felt weird to me. Especially cornering. It does not inspire a great deal of confidence. But that's the way cop-cycles look and that's the way cop-cycles ride so that's the way cop-cycles are. Doesn't matter if the BMW does everything twice and better or not. It doesn't have a springy seat so it is not fit for duty.
I see law enforcement doing the same with the CVPI. This is the way a cop-car looks, this is the way a cop-car drives, and this is the way a cop-car works so don't try to bring them anything that you think works better/more efficiently/quicker/faster/etc... they don't want it.

Lots of BM's used as police bikes in Europe.


BM is one way to describe a Minsk or a Dnepr.

Lots of police agencies in former Soviet republics still use Dneprs. Which is a BMW design....a pre-WWII BMW design, and it was built by Russians. Like some guy named Ivan dug up hundred tons of iron ore and smelted it himself it in his backyard. Made himself a cast-iron frame from the result. Course he had to use compressed potato peels for brake shoes.

Most of the American motorjocks I've spoken to prefer the Harley Davidson with an independantly sprung seat. There is nothing wrong with the BMW Police models. There is nothing wrong with the Valkyrie Police models either. The old KZ1000s are still being used for hundreds of thousands of miles for funeral escorts. Point I was making was that the Harley Davidson is what the majority of them want. It looks like a cop bike, it sounds like a cop bike, it works like a cop bike, it's got that spooky independantly sprung seat, and it matches the de-rigeur knee high boots. That's what the majority want.