Why do Australian police keep cars for such a short time?

[castellan]

They are a Government car and they still make money out of them when they sell them after a year.
2 year old Cop car the Government would lose money on them then.

Some cop cars get an easy life, but some have coped one hell of a hiding chasing down some morons.

I have seen every cop car in a town off the road getting repaired at times, they get the windows smashed in and panels are kicked in constantly. you don't hear about it in the media or from the Government, as it's all hushed up and all must be denied to the public at all cost. I think it's because the public are idiots and can't comprehend much at all worth jack.

There is nothing wrong with the engines being driven hard at all, you can't destroy them.

[cram_it_frog]

Goveremnet dept do not pay any form of sales or GST take WA Gov cars trucks ect have there own number plate

so you save a heap on purchase and rego to start with


I am not sure if Gov vehicles get slugged with delivery charge they pay less I am not sure on that one

the big thing is ks I have seen cars that are less than 1 year old but have high ks being sold and some times if you know what you are doing and understand and research the pickles auction

you can get a great gov car with very low ks and only 2 or 3 years because they do not keep them too long

so the number of Ks and age are the major factors in this process


I have bought a number of ex gov cars in the past if you know what you are doing and look at the prices yes you can get a good deal but do not just walk in put your hand up you will have to be very lucky to get a good deal

but every one should go and see car auctions it is interesting to see items being sold especially ex police cars all the idiots come out of the wood work and pay silly prices

I saw a Ford XD V8 which was based in Port headland and trashed go for double the actual value young kid bought it


at present they are a huge number of ex gov cars and lease cars from Queensland all with hail damage selling very cheap as repairable write off s

[HULK_I6T]

I was involved in with the police a few years back. With regard to their fleet of cars..

There was one car of an officer, his personal car, he drove the car for over 80,000km with no oil services. Car was a few years old and he flogged the guts out of it with NO OIL CHANGES.

When it was time to upgrade, it was found that the car had never been serviced, mechanic said the oil come out like sand... (as he described it)

Police officer was performance managed for not complying with service requirements. Gave it an oil change and traded her in, disclosed it to the dealer and traded it in at well below market value.. Not sure what the dealer told the buyer.

Someone is now driving that car.

[cram_it_frog]

a good thing i did was with the police cars in perth years back was try to see a call sign

I found a car that was used by a senior police officer in general duties

a V8 holden it was clean and tidy and I got that for a mate but next one on the list was a tango call sign and was a country unmarked traffic unit same V8 but I felt for the guy who bought it


But i have not been to a car auction for some time i do look at pickles they have a huge range and you have to be careful lots of ex mining stuff only good for scrap in many cases

underbody is often full of corrosion even at 40 k

[mik]

it probably depends on the station and the driver/s how the cars get treated, back in the xc xd days , the dealer i worked for had the police contract, and some of the cars would come in for a new clutch at 1500 service, engine bearing rattle, etc, etc, some blokes flog them to within an inch of their lives, the interceptors would come in for a c/o fmx auto at 40 k`s whether they needed them or not.
the xc interceptors would also come in for transmission modification to stop the tranny oil boilng out of the auto filler tube and setting the engine on fire after long high speed run.
its not hard to see why they change them over.

[sbutler]

The police dont pay sales tax, & there for the term of life [TOL] is much cheaper,
If they kept them for say 100,000Ks the resale will be worthless. They make money on every car they have.
All government departments do the same thing.
Buy the less tax,
keep them serviced,
sell them for more than they paid..
Simple really..

[XR8AU2121]

Well I have an ex NSW HWP 1999 AU XR8 which I bought at auction in September 2000 with 32,000K's on the clock.
I still have it and it now has 193,000k's and while it is now more than 15 years old it still drives like new, no rattles/squeaks, no backlash in drive train and apart from normal service replacements the only repairs have been a fuel pump relay, cam synchroniser, one front ball joint and a new exhaust system
While it has been driven with care, I must have been lucky.

[Kempe]

I believe the Government dont pay the taxes that are due so after say 3 years the trade in value is not much lower than the price to replace with new and sometimes they make a profit

[BA Supa Pursuit]

Originally Posted by XR8AU2121

Well I have an ex NSW HWP 1999 AU XR8 which I bought at auction in September 2000 with 32,000K's on the clock.
I still have it and it now has 193,000k's and while it is now more than 15 years old it still drives like new, no rattles/squeaks, no backlash in drive train and apart from normal service replacements the only repairs have been a fuel pump relay, cam synchroniser, one front ball joint and a new exhaust system
While it has been driven with care, I must have been lucky.

That was back when they were turned over much earlier. They still aren't a bad car at the 30000 to 40000 mark. It seems to be that last period after 60000km or so when they really start to feel their age, particularly the turbos.

[XR5]

Originally Posted by XR8AU2121

Well I have an ex NSW HWP 1999 AU XR8 which I bought at auction in September 2000 with 32,000K's on the clock.
I still have it and it now has 193,000k's and while it is now more than 15 years old it still drives like new, no rattles/squeaks, no backlash in drive train and apart from normal service replacements the only repairs have been a fuel pump relay, cam synchroniser, one front ball joint and a new exhaust system
While it has been driven with care, I must have been lucky.

Like everything it is the luck of the draw. We had some cars leave us I would happily own but some others I wouldn't want to. Country cars are usually more mechanically and structurally sound than city cars are. I guess it just shows how regardless of what use they are for you can take two of the same model car and put them side by side and one can have problems whereas the other one will be perfect.

[irvinnie]

Originally Posted by XR5

Like everything it is the luck of the draw. We had some cars leave us I would happily own but some others I wouldn't want to. Country cars are usually more mechanically and structurally sound than city cars are. I guess it just shows how regardless of what use they are for you can take two of the same model car and put them side by side and one can have problems whereas the other one will be perfect.

I will second this comment. Having worked at both it is night and day as to how they are driven. Used to get 40k out of a set of tyres at my country station where all I basically did was drive on an open highway get a speed, flash them from a mile away and do a gentle u turn to pull up behind them and issue a ticket. Plus hardly ever did urgent duty runs due to the quieter nature of country policing. Compare that to changing tyres every 10k service and normally also rotors, speeding cars not stopping and always doing hard u turns, heavy acceleration and big stops, plus numerous urgent duty runs all added to a much harder driven car. Don't get me wrong though they are all serviced well and if you ever did anything to the car that you thought may have done any damage it was thoroughly inspected. No one wants to hop into a car (or have their mate hop into a car) that may have damage and then have to travel at extreme speeds and not be sure that the car was in a roadworthy condition.

To be honest I would have no issue in buying s second hand HWP car but I would select a country car of a city one

[BA Supa Pursuit]

Originally Posted by irvinnie

I will second this comment. Having worked at both it is night and day as to how they are driven. Used to get 40k out of a set of tyres at my country station where all I basically did was drive on an open highway get a speed, flash them from a mile away and do a gentle u turn to pull up behind them and issue a ticket. Plus hardly ever did urgent duty runs due to the quieter nature of country policing. Compare that to changing tyres every 10k service and normally also rotors, speeding cars not stopping and always doing hard u turns, heavy acceleration and big stops, plus numerous urgent duty runs all added to a much harder driven car. Don't get me wrong though they are all serviced well and if you ever did anything to the car that you thought may have done any damage it was thoroughly inspected. No one wants to hop into a car (or have their mate hop into a car) that may have damage and then have to travel at extreme speeds and not be sure that the car was in a roadworthy condition.

To be honest I would have no issue in buying s second hand HWP car but I would select a country car of a city one

Yes that's true. Ours generally receive new brakes every 10k and tyres there abouts. The worst car you can land at auction is the driver training HWP cars. These have the hardest lives of any car anywhere. Tyres last about 1000km and nearly all their driving is urgent duty simulation. I drove one with 20000 odd Kms and it felt like it had half a million Kms!

[jaydee]

Originally Posted by XR8AU2121

Well I have an ex NSW HWP 1999 AU XR8 which I bought at auction in September 2000 with 32,000K's on the clock.
I still have it and it now has 193,000k's and while it is now more than 15 years old it still drives like new, no rattles/squeaks, no backlash in drive train and apart from normal service replacements the only repairs have been a fuel pump relay, cam synchroniser, one front ball joint and a new exhaust system
While it has been driven with care, I must have been lucky.

My XC (which is my avatar) I got from the auctions in 1981 with 120k on the clock, ex driver training and highway patrol, still got it, nearly 500k on the clock.
But as they say, they don't make them like that anymore.
Yep cop cars get worked hard, but as someone said, tool of the trade, they're there to do a job, not drive around sedately getting from A to B.

[Bulletime]

They get them pretty cheap too, not just normal fleet pricing, I've heard of new SS for low 30s for federal government. Resell that in a couple years time for low to mid 30s and theres ya profit

[sbutler]

I still have my 6/2010 HWP car & its the same as XR8AU2121 car.
Still drives like new, 130,000 trouble free Ks. I have put a battery, & a set of front wheel bearings in it, & of course the usual stuff, like brake pads, & wiper blades. Other than that I couldn't be happier. It had 59900Ks when I got it.

[zaczac]

I can guarantee you that in Qld it is simply a matter of budget. Police have limited budgets and basically they want best re-sale on cars that are basically stock. Research has revealed this is why they replace vehicles at certain times.

Contrary to all the crap out there about 'hotted' up cop cars, they are not. They are stock and just have all the markings and gear added. So its no great loss to removes the gear and put in next car.

I know of Qld Police cars replaced at 60,000 and others at 175,000 depending on make/model.

[aussie muscle]

I remember nsw used to have billboards showing four or five cars with a police car in the middle...and text "which is a cop car?"
"answer: all of them"
except a couple were old (like vw beetle) and i thought "i've never seen them drive anything more than a couple years old...

[ebxr8240]

They pretty much sell them for what they paid for them...
They don't pay the tax's etc we pay..

[FGX335]

My father in law used to be in HWP for the NSW Police, and has told me a few stories.

He would often have XC or XD 351 in top gear going as fast as it possibly could on the Pacific Highway, back in the days when it was single lane both ways, and still recalls just how good those cars were at full speed. When they had to get a doctor into the city to perform an urgent operation, they would be tasked with getting them there as quickly as possible. Recall the scene in Die Hard 3 where the stockbroker gets in the cab and asks to go to Wall Street? The doctor would end up being that guy in the back!

I've heard about XD's going right over the top of a motorbike during a pursuit, wiping out on a gutter at a sharp corner of a street and ripping the suspension right out, and even how he ended his career with a prisoner transport at 2am in the morning when the driver fell asleep and had a horrific crash. Luckily he is ok, but he has lasting issues from that incident (plenty of scars, and partially restricted movement). The driver and prisoner walked away with barely a scratch, where he was in Intensive Care and needed months off work to recuperate.

My favourite was the one HWP guy that all of the other officers hated. They stuffed prawn heads in the AC vents of his car, and it took him ages to figure it out. Unfortunately, they would have to also drive that vehicle on occasion, and they were all happy to see that car go to the auctions. Some poor bastard would have ended up with that car!

Some cars would go to auction clapped out, and others were well looked after. I think they used to swap them over at about 80,000km, and sometimes the guys would buy a particular car at auction if it was in good nick.