A11 Norwich to Wymondham

[QBee]

Toddling along at 60 on Tuesday morning, towing a trailer, when a Civic and a white 55 reg Mondeo came past and pulled into my lane. At which point the Mondeo lit up like a red and blue Christmas tree and pulled the Civic over for a chat.

Most surprised the Norfolk police are using an eight year old unmarked Mondeo......thought a Ford doing police mileage would be binned after 18 months.

[slippery]

I got pulled over by that one about four years ago. I have never failed to spot it since!

[gaz453]

They have still got a couple st220's and st tdci's going round. The other unusual unmarked cars to look out for are a grey 1 series. 1 grey and 1 black jag xf, and a white transporter van!

[iluvmercs]

http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&a...



They have a couple of current shape Mondeos doing the rounds - silvery white estate and silver saloon. Both diesel, I think Titanium models. Yes, I know this from experience.

Darren

[QBee]

It was the age and shed-like quality of the Mondeo that surprised me. If I fancy a little acceleration and check first, I usually ignore anything older than about 2008

[threesixty]

QBee said:

It was the age and shed-like quality of the Mondeo that surprised me. If I fancy a little acceleration and check first, I usually ignore anything older than about 2008

That ones got really obvious lights on the parcel shelf . Some of the new ones are incredibly hard to spot!

[Kidders]

It's because ST220s are still a great all rounder despite their age

[Konan]

QBee said:

thought a Ford doing police mileage would be binned after 18 months.

Are the days of the 250K ford over now? It's been a while since I had one.

[Kidders]

Speaking to a man who looks after a lot of met police stuff down south, the Fords are far more reliable than the audis on fleet and that's why they hang onto the older ones. E39 BMW is one of their favourites though.

[baldy1926]

Kidders said:

Speaking to a man who looks after a lot of met police stuff down south, the Fords are far more reliable than the audis on fleet and that's why they hang onto the older ones. E39 BMW is one of their favourites though.

I've not seen any audis on fleet with the met.
Area cars are skoda vrs estates the smoker variant.
They are prone to breaking as they are run at max weight. They replaced 3 series estates which were tiny inside.
The oldest cars are astras with hyandia's also being used.
There are some focus's around they take the speed bumps fairly well.
Ford have provided some new focus's on trial so we could go back to ford again for general cars.

[QBee]

If the ST220 has different bodywork to the standard car then I suspect the one I saw was a cooking diesel. It looked remarkably ordinary.

[Kidders]

Well that's weird as I saw at least 5 Audi A6 estates (3.0tdi) in covert form at the police training centre in Hendon. Their opinion of them wasn't very high in terms of reliability.

[Kidders]

QBee said:

If the ST220 has different bodywork to the standard car then I suspect the one I saw was a cooking diesel. It looked remarkably ordinary.

The ST220 and ST Tdci have a bodykit wider flared front wings and 18 inch 16 spoke alloy wheels, V6 has the twin exit diesel just the one.

[baldy1926]

Kidders said:

Well that's weird as I saw at least 5 Audi A6 estates (3.0tdi) in covert form at the police training centre in Hendon. Their opinion of them wasn't very high in terms of reliability.

The stuff at Hendon is often different to what makes it out on the streets. The squads often have their own budgets to get what they want