quote:

Originally posted by ArtieS:
Orange County Sheriff (FL) is having a confiscated Challenger Demon painted up...

Nice. In Polk County, Sheriff Grady Judd has a 1972 Ford Galaxie:


FL Department Restores 1972 Patrol Car, Surprises Sheriff

Grady Judd is a bad ass.......

True story!

I read Artie’s post about Orange County and then wondered what they have in Polk County. I was thinking Polk County probably had something really cool, so I looked it up. I had no clue how cool.

From the article:

“I won’t slow down until I am dead. I said you can tell when I’m retiring from the sheriff’s office, and they said ‘how.’ I said well, you look up and they’ll be bringing me out of the office in a pine box and putting me on a red fire truck backed up to the front door. They said, ‘a red fire truck’ and I said yeah, I always wanted to ride on a fire truck,” says Judd.

This Galaxy takes me back to when I was a gas pump Jockey for Sohio off one of the Ohio Turnpike exits. We always had a pot of coffee going for any patrol officer in need of a break and a place to have some coffee while catching up on the paperwork. As a result I spend a fair bit of time talking to the Ohio Highway Patrol Officers. Good guys every single on of them.

Anyhow at that Time the OHP was using either Dodge Polara's with the 440 Magnum or the Chevy Caprice which was offered in two "flavors". The normal flavor was a LS-5 454 under the hood putting out an honest 365 HP. The "interceptors" had the spicy flavor, an under rated LS-6 454 with an advertised 425 HP but if well tuned capable of at least 480-500 HP.

Technically the Polara should have been faster that the 365 HP Caprices but there wasn't a single officer in the OHP that would take the Polara over 115 mph, because they had so much rear end lift they would start to yaw at the rear. BTW, my father had a Chrysler 300 with the TNT 440 and it would do the same thing, hit 110 and it got a bit scary. So the favorite was the Caprice and they were very highly regarded. IF someone in a Vette was feeling a bit frisky and got one of the Interceptors on their tail they were in for a real shock, because those Caprices could hit an honest 165 and be as stable as a train running on smooth tracks.

BTW, at that time the C3 Corvette wasn't nearly as fast as it looked, because the body had a lot of drag and the chassis wasn't that good. In addition most would cheap out and get the base line V8. Yeah the L-88 cars could break 160 but those were very rare and mostly only used on a race track. So the Corvette street cars would get eaten up by those big stable Caprices. As a result runners were very rare and those who did got caught pretty quickly.