buying an ex police car yes or no?

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Soldato
Joined
21 Nov 2004
Posts
13,558
Location
Wishaw
Have been looking at a few ex police cars lately as the wifes looking for a replacement for the LCR and something along the lines of an S60 meets her criteria and there seems to be plenty of them about for not much money


so tell me i keep seeing S60 T5's circa 56/07 plates with 110-130k miles for between £3000 and £4000 depending on condition what would be wrong with buying one?

as far as i can tell

Pros

they seem to be cheap, a lot of car for the money.
they will have been serviced regularly and be maintained to a good standard(ex traffic cars anyway i know the panda cars are a tad neglected)
the majority of them are white which in the wifes eyes is good(its a fashionable colour atm)

Cons
cant really think of that many as it seems most police forces appreciate resale values and tend to be sympathetic these days when installing equipment so no major holes or missing trim in the examples i've looked at online

mileage is going to be high 100k> i dont know how relative this is though, i've always looked to buy cars on condition rather than mileage but the thought of a T5 with over 100k miles worrys me somewhat especially as one of the first things that will happen is it will get mapped, to keep her happy regards performance. are the 2.4's generally reliable lumps or am i in for a world of expensive bills and a lot of things that will be dealer only in terms of repairs or replacement?


the resale value isnt an issue as any car will be kept for at least 3 years and in my book after that its paid for itself so no issues on that front

anyone care to share their thoughts?
 
Nope, never in a million years.

Never mind that well serviced fantasy, the well killed every day of its life evens that out.

Also think on this, cheap to buy is cheap to sell, you dont gain anything except driving a shed till you sell it.
 
Looked after?

Ask yourself this, when you drive a hire-car, or pool-car or other car that isn't yours, just how much care do you take over the warm-up/cool-down cycle?

They get vehicularly raped.
 
Firestar_3x said:
IF you can ever sell it.
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Well lets assume you can sell it, what would you rather have a 7k minter in a decent colour not thrashed every day or a 4k police car, which you will inevitably spend a few quid on getting the dash board sorted ?

When in 2 years time you get proportionally what you put in back?
 
paradigm said:
Looked after?

Ask yourself this, when you drive a hire-car, or pool-car or other car that isn't yours, just how much care do you take over the warm-up/cool-down cycle?

They get vehicularly raped.
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Forget that these cars spend all day in 2nd and 3rd gear on the red line. They get a much worse hammering than any hire car.

Unless its a motorway car then you got starship mileage its just a false economy buying them.

Also i just cant understand why youd even think about one of these, you obviously aint skint, you were gonna buy some mad Jeep the other week, what you want to **** about with police cars for?
 
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I've seen quite a few go through at auction and they were all complete sheds.

I spotted a vRS Octavia from a distance and thought they had fitted different seats... they hadn't, they were just black with grime in the front and charcoal grey with some interesting stain patches in the back.
 
they. get. killed.

remember that episode of police camera action where a volvo is parked on the motorway and a lupo gti passes at 140ish mph.

the volvo is started and then floored until it catches the lupo.

a guy on another board is a traffic copper, they knock about in BMW diesels. theyll be raped from cold, arrive at a scene and left to idle indefinately and they smoke so badly they leave soot tracks

speed bumps.

and the servicing, its all done to a cost, as cheaply as possible, so they wont be getting any premium oils to make up for the killing

avoid unless youre using it for banger racing
 
Pandas are abused all day everyday, traffic cars do a lot of cruising and generally driven by people who appreciate cars /mass generalisation over
 
arknor said:
ive saw some involved in traffic chases before this was back in the 90's when i lived near joyrider central though.
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Of course they chase people, and 2 years of that is enough to kill anything, its just a false economy the whole thing.

Not to mention plods other little habbit of writing a car off 3 times and repairing it without mentioning it to anyone, lets not forget that little gem.
 
it was just a passing thought, SWMBO likes the idea of a cheap S60 with no finance on a reasonably new plate,

in her eyes the only cost associated with the car is the purchase cost and the petrol costs(very rare bill as she always seems to leave that to me)

anyone have any thoughts on maintaining and reliability on the T5's? is it something that will give me nightmares or should i just tell her to suck it up and live with some sort of alfa/fiat/saab with a nice 1.9 cdti that i can steal parts from the taxis for?
 
Foxtrot26 said:
it was just a passing thought, SWMBO likes the idea of a cheap S60 with no finance on a reasonably new plate,

in her eyes the only cost associated with the car is the purchase cost and the petrol costs(very rare bill as she always seems to leave that to me)

anyone have any thoughts on maintaining and reliability on the T5's? is it something that will give me nightmares or should i just tell her to suck it up and live with some sort of alfa/fiat/saab with a nice 1.9 cdti that i can steal parts from the taxis for?
Click to expand...

You get what you pay for, you know this, free dinners are all over in the motors game mate.
 
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