Ford Upgrading Police ‘Utilities’; Chambers Grows
The public likes its SUVs; obviously, so do law enforcement agencies.
More and more, we see police SUVs parked on ramps and median strips where they can see and be seen, in addition to mixing in with us in the flow of traffic.
A side note: It took years to figure out what a driver could do to warrant being pulled out of the creeping flow of rush-hour traffic by an officer, much the way a cowboy would separate an unbranded heifer from a herd of cattle.
It turns out that license-plate scanners readily identify those of us who haven’t renewed registrations, inspected our vehicles, or otherwise have run afoul of the automotive bureaucracy.
And good luck picking out the police SUV in your rearview mirror the way generations of us learned to spot the silhouette of the Ford Crown Victoria. The SUV’s low-profile overhead bar lights are pretty hard to differentiate from a citizen’s Explorer with a roof rack, especially now that Ford offers 25 different lighting patterns for its utility interceptors. Those range from the obvious to stealth installations.
Over the years, terms such as “squad car’’ and “cruiser’’ came to describe police vehicles.
This new Police Interceptor Utility, as Ford calls its Explorer-based, all-wheel-drive is a name that doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue. But it sure rolls off the assembly line.
Ford owns 55 percent of the law enforcement vehicle market, good for 36,000 sales globally last year. It has seen its police utility interceptor outsell its sedan cruiser, two to one, since the two new vehicles were introduced for the 2012 model year. The utility and a sedan based on the Ford Taurus replaced the phased-out rear-wheel-drive Crown Victoria.
The utility version is only getting more refined. The 2016 model, which will be available this summer, was introduced earlier this month at the Chicago Auto Show.
You can’t blame officers for liking the vehicle. If you’re driving a sedan and following an SUV, your forward visibility is limited. So, if you can’t see through them, you might as well be operating on their level.
If you’re in an SUV, you sit up higher and have a better view. That, plus the perception of greater safety and more space for passengers and cargo, are a few of the reasons why SUVs have become such a presence on our roads.
It’s taken a while for safety systems such as stability and rollover control plus rearview cameras to smooth over some of the SUV’s rough edges.
Now they have, and Ford promises that the police utilities will get even better.
One of the big advances is a surveillance mode that watches out for the officer in his vehicle, rolling up the driver’s side window and locking the doors if someone approaches the vehicle from the rear.
The rear camera comes with a washer for the lens and a four-inch screen in the center stack. An option allows it to be seen in the rearview mirror.
Other options include blind-spot warnings, rear cross-traffic alert, ballistic shields in the front doors, hands-free Sync communication, and a reverse sensor that picks up objects within six feet of the rear bumper.
Since 2000, Ford has used a rotating advisory panel of 25 law enforcement professionals to design these vehicles.
The 2016 model incorporates several “customer requests,’’ including a reconfigured grille for better cooling, a return to wig-wag flashing incandescent-bulb high-beams, and a 45-second tailgate release button (before closing and relocking).
Power comes from a standard 3.7-liter V-6 (304 horsepower, 279 lb.-ft. of torque) or an optional 3.5-liter EcoBoost (turbocharged) V-6 with 365 horsepower and 350 lb.-ft. of torque.
The standard six-speed automatic transmission goes into automatic pursuit mode when it detects aggressive driving situations, based on brake-line pressure, deceleration intensity, and lateral acceleration rates. The mode optimizes upshift and downshift performance for aggressive driving, reverting to fuel-saving mode when it senses a normal driving pattern.
Ford says the pursuit-mode software is tuned to help perform the driving maneuver known as the 180-degree “J-turn’’ by a pursuit vehicle.
Massachusetts is among the top five markets for the police utility, along with California, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, and Washington.
Chambers
This month’s weather put a bit of a blanket (of snow) over the grand opening of Herb Chamber’s 55th dealership. Herb Chambers Lincoln is operating at 85 Granite St. in Braintree, adjacent to Herb Chambers Ford of Braintree. Lincoln has been seeking to solidify its branding with the MKS and MKZ sedans, a variety of crossovers (MKC, MKT, MKX), and Navigator SUVs. “Lincoln soon will celebrate its 100th anniversary, which is a great testament to its vehicles’ quality, comfort, and reliability,’’ says Chambers, whose group now is the nation’s 12th largest. “We’re proud to add another American brand to our family, especially one with such a special legacy.’’
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