Ive told the story of driving a 67 biscayne 2 door post, a pale metallic blue ex Mountie car with a 396, it was a rocket. In those years the
Rcmp traded cars, when they got the Biscayne new, they traded in a black 1965 Plymouth 2 door post with I assume a 383. It wasnt as quick as the 396, but it had tall gearing. A fellow in Richmond PEI bought it, nobody outran it.
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63 Parisienne sport coupe (The Big GTO), black, maroon interior, 409 4 speed; former owner of a 59 El Camino, 63 Corvette SWC, 62 Chev Bel Air SC. 1963- Pontiac top selling car in Canada
Mahone Bay, NS Still not old enough to need an automatic
. FWIW, I've heard/read many opinions by police officers back in the day who said the Mopar police package was their favourite for high speed chases... though I hesitate to say this on a GM forum...
I think this opinion has generally become the defacto fact of Police Car yore.
That's very cool. I had always hoped to run across an old highway patrol car. Sadly, most were relieved of their big blocks soon after they were sold. My first job was at a Shell gas station at Broadway and Nanaimo in Vancouver. I worked there after school each day. The owner always bought 2 or 3 old police cars to paint and sell. I remember some 68 Biscaynes from the city of Vancouver that I helped on. They were 307 cars, but had the ralley wheels and disc brakes. That got me interested in old police cars. It was at that gas station that I saw an unmarked 69 Strato Chief with a 427. It was black, with a flip up red light on the dash, and was a highway patrol car in Burnaby.
Later, when I worked at Dennison Chev Olds in Richmond, we got a slew of RCMP cars in on trade, mostly 72 Dodges and Plymouths, but one 72 454 Biscayne and one 72 Ford Custom with a 429. The Mopars were all 440's. I was seriously thinking of buying the Biscayne, and drove it. Not much off the line, but a rocket on the highway. I drove a couple of the Mopars, and they were fast! The highway patrol guys back then did prefer the Mopars right up until the Lean Burn engines came out, and then they hated them.
Most old police cars became taxi's back then. I took this photo in Richmond, of an unmarked 73 Biscayne, pulling over a former police car, now taxi.
Yes but somehow I'm betting against this car being a 4 speed and I believe that is the only way you could get the 425 horse in a 65 B body. The rest of the 65 396 B bodies were 325 horse.
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1966 Strato Chief 2 door, 427 4 speed, 45,000 original miles
1966 Grande Parisienne, 396 1 of 23 factory air cars
