Just wondering if anyone has had any experience with ex police cars and is it worth buying one and what to look out for?

Thinking of selling my petrol vrs as it drinks too much fuel on my commute and was thinking of going down ex police avenue as some right bargains knocking about!!

Advice muchly appreciated!

Edited 17 May, 201313 yr by Glynn

They will be high mileage but well maintained; they may well have a "poverty spec" like for instance normal model cloth seats rather than half-leather sports seats on a vRS.

Do you still get the batternburgs left on LOL!

As above they will have been well maintained, will have been driven by various drivers, who in general will be better trained than Joe public or your average rep. They will in general have had some good thrashings during persuits, but that would only be for a minority of their life miles wise. If you look at I similar to buying at auction, I.e. it's cheaper so if nothing goes wrong with it you're quids in then you could get a good deal. There must be some police drivers on Brisky who can give you some general feedback on if it's worth the risk

Good chance they've been bounced over kerbs,hit speed bumps at 60 mph, driven through fields,involved in a accidents and had objects thrown at them if what you see on police camera action is true!

Do you still get the batternburgs left on LOL!

And lights I wish!! Haha

The cars ive been looking at have been the likes of 325d m sports and 530d so clearly traffic cars but i read a piece somewhere (think it was pistonheads) that all the cars are serviced every 5k and only manufactures parts are used so they should be in relatively good nick.

Ive read a couple of horror stories (one of them being a mk1 octy vrs!) But going to take them with a pinch of salt

Good chance they've been bounced over kerbs,hit speed bumps at 60 mph, driven through fields,involved in a accidents and had objects thrown at them if what you see on police camera action is true!

I work on alot of volvo traffic cars and would never buy one after those animals have finished with them, yes they get looked after but boy do they get some abuse and the crash repairs leave alot to be desired at times, oh and the unmarked ones arn't any better

Alot of forces are cost cutting last few years and keeping cars longer and repairing the crash damaged ones maybe they wouldn't have done a few years ago. I currently have a 59 plate traffic car on my ramp at work thats 4 years old, yeah its low milage at 67k is the reason why they still have it

Thrashed from cold every time a call comes in and left idling forever or switched straight off after being thrashed hard. Not for me Im afraid but I am led to believe they are at least well serviced.

My cousin had a mk2 octavia sport, it was a bit rough in places with big miles, 150,000 if I recall. But he paid next to nothing for it and it run sweet as a nut for the duration that he had it. Not ideal cars if you want a good example but if you just want something to get from a to b and not pay big money they can sometimes be good choices.

I've been looking at the same kind of ex police cars for myself as I have a romantic notion of me cruising the highways and byways in a T5 or 535d. I've read the stories both good and bad and as I'm not a gambling man I chicken out before I get anywhere near buying one.

There are so many more than just Police Patrol cars, Transport or Nuclear Police,

Various Government Departments,HMRC etc & Military Police or Armed Forces vehicles that come up for auction.

http://www.woma.co.uk

A case of looking what there is where you want to go to, and knowing what you are looking at.

george

My Superb was ex police and never let me down and was a good buy. Well serviced and tight as a nut

I almost bought a ex police Mondeo ST220 a little while ago but in the end settled on the BM.

Good chance they've been bounced over kerbs,hit speed bumps at 60 mph, driven through fields,

My wife must be a Traffic cop

Almost without exception they will all be poverty spec or (in the case of some Vauxhalls) an emergency service special. The general "Panda" cars will be low performance diesels and will in main have lead a very hard life. The traffic cars are likely to be BMW 530d or D5 Volvos these days. Ours for example are replaced every 120k (if they live that long) and will reach that mileage in anything between 18months to 5 years depending on where it was based. They were serviced every 6k (and it's needed), however financial restrictions mean that they are now moving onto 10k services. They are all normal spec and will have spent their time on the fleet heavily loaded with kit in the boot.

Not one that I can think of has all of its panels in the same condition as they were when it left the factory. Everything that you should not do to a car they have done to them - thrashed from cold, engine turned off straight after a response drive and being left at tickover for hours on end. Lets not even start on some of the "passengers" that we sometimes have.

My own choice would be to steer clear - unless you can get one extremely cheaply. They are usually disposed of through auctions etc, but there may be better sources of cheap cars. This is just my own opinion of course, based on several years hands with them.

That must be your area.

Others Have Skoda, VW's, Vauxhalls, Fords, Subaru, Land Rover, Range Rover, Honda (CRV), Nissan (X-Trail), Toyota Land Cruisers etc etc. & the BMW's & Volvos.

& not just Poverty Spec, Leased Vehicles going to auction.

george

Cheers for the feedback guys probs not bother with ex police now

although will check out the website cheers sk4gw

They're thrashed 24/7 for 365 days a year. For that reason i'm out.

A friends of mine who's a paramedic tells me that the ambulance patrol cars used are generally ex cop cars. He drives an ex police BMW 530D as a ambulance car I think, I guess they might keep the best ones for the services and auction off the Road Wars models.

I'v heard ex cop cars can do some awesome things...anyone remember this?

And the motorbikes too.

Do they put the car map back to standard for the pursiut cars I wonder? Presume they would.

Use to organise the sale of Customs seized cars, van, yatchts after the court cases and they sometimes went very cheap put it was all by sealed tender so if was pot luck if you got a bargain.

I bought a Ford Focus, it was on 90,000miles when I bought it. It had some rubbish paintwork on it but being white it always looked cheerful enough. It was mechanically very good with invoices as far as you could be bothered to read. (you could call them....old bills....) Great car that did me well, I did cam belt, water pump and bottom pulley. I had it for two years and now my sister has it and loves it. It was £1500 under retail when I bought it and still regularly does over 60mpg. I have to say, for a bit of a mileagey old shunter, one of the best cars I have owned.

Wouldn't touch one with a barge pole.

I knew a bloke when i lived oop north who did the servicing and he reckons the idea they are well maintained is utter make believe. Its done on a shoestring and often services are missed all together. Also consider the kind of people they have in the back.. drug dealers, rapists, prostitues etc, no amount of rug doctoring would make me want to spend any longer than i had to in the back seat!

Think how you drive a courtesy/hire car, you wouldn't buy one of those would you? At least i hope you wouldn't.

Do they put the car map back to standard for the pursiut cars I wonder? Presume they would.

When I worked for Vauxhall Demo Fleet (at Norton, Worcester) I used to deliver their Police models from Vauxhall SVO, and we were told then that there was no retuning done to them, other than they had Austrian spec ECU's fitted.

Surely they cant be any worse then alot of 2nd cars out there? At least ex police cars are serviced, shoestring or not. Some cars dont even get that, get ragged to death by various owners day in day out and people still buy those and get years of trouble free motoring

Sent from my iPhone 4s

No chance I would be picking one up either. High milage, looked after but not loved, raced and rallied and usually the dashboards are fubar because of the amount of equipment that they use.

When I worked for Vauxhall Demo Fleet (at Norton, Worcester) I used to deliver their Police models from Vauxhall SVO, and we were told then that there was no retuning done to them, other than they had Austrian spec ECU's fitted.

I had heard that the pursuit Octavia (Mk1s) had the K4 (?) turbo and map.

Best GM cars I went in with police were the Vauxhall Senators. Think they were just best of the Senator but I hear also they had a little tweak

• "A 24-valve 3.0 L was introduced in 1989, generating 204 PS (150 kW; 201 hp) (compared with 177 PS (130 kW; 175 hp) for the older 12-valve version). This model was very popular with the police force in the UK, with several cars being supplied to upgraded police specification. The main feature of the new engine was a "Dual Ram" system, increasing torque at low engine speeds by means of a redirected air flow system engaged at 4,000 rpm." (Wikipedia)
  

You mentioning Norton reminds me of two Norton Police bikes (three actually as there were two variants) I was also involved with. A friend bought an ex-police Norton Commando 750, police had it Paul Dunstall tuned, 0-90 in 9 seconds the police would advertise. Then when working for Piper did some work on both the air cooled and water cooled W*nkel engined bikes. The water cooled one was amazing, incredibly smooth and as Steve Hislop demonstrated in the TT in the early 90s incredible quick too.

I had heard that the pursuit Octavia (Mk1s) had the K4 (?) turbo and map.

Don't think they had their turbos uprated but they definitely used to be mapped as I knew the company that serviced and mapped them - that was for the Essex force cars. They also used to change the brake pads to higher performance ones.