Chrysler Unveils a New Police Cruiser- But Will It Get Out of It's Own Way?

The web/blog-sphere is all abuzz on the purportedly "all-new" 2011 Dodge Charger Pursuit read- the car car your local municipality would probably order for police duty? And most certainly yellow the car you'll be hailing on New York City streets in a few years too.

Doesn't look all that new to me- maybe it's a revised edition? Maybe most of the new is much to what this car guy can't see.... Or tell, or really care for anyway. Only real change- from what pictures I can see- are the tail-lights.

Standard is a high-output, (rather large bore too) 3.6-liter Pentastar V6- of course, the 5.7-liter Hemi is still available... Special electronics, lights, packages... You get the picture.

It's the car Robocop would have driven if he wasn't driving a Taurus, or was it a Lumina? Who could remember... Bad movie. Or rather, bad series of movies.

I'm happy to see Chrysler picking up where Ford is leaving-off with it's venerable Ford Crown Victoria being dethroned from what has been the all-time police cruiser favorite since the Dodge Diplomat of the early 1980s- think Hill Street Blues era. Maybe it was a Plymouth Fury? Same thing...

Ford is retiring the Crown Vic Interceptor and all its real-wheel-drive, re-inforced body-on-frame glory next year... Passing police duties to a special SHO/SVT-esque Taurus.

But as a kid who watched a lot of police dramas re-runs of the 60's, 70's and 80's growing up- to see Chrysler getting deeper into police duties is rather comforting. TJ Hooker, CHiPS (when they weren't riding Kawasaki motorcycles) the Blues Brothers; Roscoe in The Dukes of Hazzard... All drove MoPar police cruisers....

Hell- in the Dukes of Hazzard- the orange Charger was the car getting chased by the police- now the cops drive Chargers... Oy, how things have really come full-circle now.

But if Chrysler really wanted to strike that chord- they would have put the revised tail lamp treatment/fascia back in the chrome bumpers.... Or vertically stacked the headlights.

Wait- there are no more chrome bumpers... Oh well, you can't go home again.

But having a few friends who are policemen, I just hope Chrysler has made the "all-new" 2011 Charger Pursuit more maneuverable than the car it replaces; because yeah, the Charger with the 5.7-liter Hemi is very fast, it just can't be tossed and spun-around as well as the Crown Vic that's "going away for a while."