Isn’t it weird how Police departments all seem to pick the same car? I was born in 1997, that meant that for most of my life, a police car was, with few exceptions, a Ford Crown Victoria. I saw them on the street and all over TV. The Crown Vic was discontinued in 2011, but still the cops have stuck with Fords, specifically the Taurus and Explorer. But if you lived through the 70s, a cop car for you was made by Mopar. Chrysler could not give away their big cars to retail buyers, but the cops absolutely loved them.
According to Allpar, by 1970, a staggering 85% of American cop cars were made by Chrysler. And the reason is summed up simply in the figures above, obtained from testing by CHP in 1968. Chrysler’s 440 Magnum V8 (7.2 liters) crushed all opposition. It was also noted that the Olds was good in a straight line but left much to be desired in the corners, meanwhile the Mercury, and all big Fords for that matter, struggled with braking problems.
1970 Dodge Coronet
1971-ish Plymouth Satellite
1970 Dodge Polara
1973 Plymouth Fury
There were 4 nameplates that most commonly had shotgun racks and light bars: the intermediate Dodge Coronet and Plymouth Satellite and the full sized Dodge Polara and Plymouth Fury. These cars came with the most powerful engines as well as special heavy duty police-only suspension to handle the taxing requirements. Obviously, high speed chases are a rare occurence, but still, police cars will take extreme abuse as they spend all day patrolling city streets filled with potholes and for rapid response, they need to be able to take sharp turns at high speed.
And their performance was something else. A 1973 Road And Track test of police packs showed that a Coronet with a 360 cubic inch V8 was slightly faster than a heavier Ford Torino with a 460 cubic inch V8, making Starsky’s car choice all the more questionable. A test of a Polara by the California Highway Patrol with the 440 gave a 0-60 time of 7.7 seconds and a top speed of 129, making it one of those very few cars that could keep up with modern traffic.
Plymouth Fury
Plymouth Gran Fury
Dodge Monaco
For 1974, Chrysler redesigned its full sized cars, with the big Dodges dropping the Polara name and going solely by Monaco. They were launched days before the beginning of the oil crisis and were panned for their derivative styling. Plymouth could not give away their Furies, only 120,000 were sold that year. At the same time, Chevrolet sold 630,000 Bel Airs, Impalas, and Caprices, Ford sold 430,000 LTDs and Galaxies. But the police continued to love their big Mopars, even if emissions controls were harming performance.
1977 Dodge Monaco
1978 Plymouth Fury
Soon, Chrysler was so poor they couldn’t afford to have separate names for their midsized and full sized cars. In 1975, the Satellite became known as Fury, while all the big Plymouths became Gran Furies. In 1977, the Coronet likewise became the Monaco, while all the big Dodges became Royal Monacos. In 1978, Plymouth alone had 80% of the police market, but things began to go downhill.
1980 Plymouth Gran Fury
For 1979, a disastrous downsizing-on-the-cheap caused Chrysler to lose its stranglehold on the police market. This set up big changes in the 80s.
Chevrolet Impala
In the 80s, Chevrolet’s generally excellent B-bodies, the Impala before 1985 and the Caprice afterwards, gave Plymouth and Dodge a run for their money.
In 1982, the Gran Fury and Royal Monaco names were put on a pair of intermediates that had been previously been sold as the Dodge Diplomat. Compared to the big Chevrolets, they were smaller and less spacious but used just as much gas.
But in 1980, Chrysler’s dominance of the police market was given a wonderful sendoff in the movie Blues Brothers starring Dan Akroyd and John Belushi. Their “Bluesmobile” was a converted 1974 Dodge Monaco bought at a police auction.
And in the movie’s climax car chase, there were seemingly hundreds of other Mopar police cars in pursuit, all of which managed to send the Monaco into the history books.