‘Police Pursuit’ Torana

It seems that just about everyone is fascinated by high-speed police cars, including the celebrated automotive designer, Peter Arcadipane.

Back in 1978, he was a contributor to Motor Manual magazine and submitted the following design for what he reckoned would be the ultimate Police Pursuit vehicle. And, strangely for someone who is more often associated with Ford products, he chose a Holden.

“Australia should have utilised the LH-LX Torana V8 sedan as the basic police vehicle,” he wrote (this model was being phased out at the time to make way for the VB Commodore).

“It was small and nimble, could be optioned up to an excellent high-speed pursuit car (especially having L34 and A9X components to pick from and the racing program to speed development), parts were cheap, resale good and standardising on one type of car could have developed a world class police car.”

His suggestion for a Highway Patrol car (see illustration) was for a base trim four-door with 308 V8, Turbo 400 transmission and “all the heavy-duty race drive-train components to make it stop and handle like they do on the track”.

His concept included long-range fuel tanks, full SL/R instrumentation and steering wheel. Standard cars with smaller motors would be used for general policing duties. As you can see, Arcadipane also wanted to adapt the American-style black and white colour scheme.

“Which brings the point up about our cars not being visible enough,” he wrote. “The ‘Candy Cars’ are reasonably noticeable from certain views (certainly not when they are approaching you from behind), the rest are hopelessly understated for the innocent.”

The reason for Peter choosing GM-H over Ford? He reckoned those V8 Falcons were too big and too expensive. As we’ve discovered when we compiled a feature on cop cars in AMC #49, there are plenty of Highway Patrol officers that would heartily disagree with him on those two points!