Pick Your Compact Cop: Cold Start

Okay, let’s do a little thought experiment: you’ve just been arrested. By two separate teams of police. Your crime was, let’s say, premeditated mopery, which is when you expose yourself to a humanoid or abstracted humanoid statue or sculpture with the intent to arouse. You protest, insisting that your mopery was impulsive, not premeditated, and as such was really hardly an infraction at all, but the cops won’t have it. Each pair of cops seizes an arm and begins to walk off, but then realizes that they can’t both take you, at least not without some pretty intense surgery. They decide to leave it up to you: which cops do you pick to arrest and detain you?

Now, you being you, the only rational way to decide which cops to go with are, of course, their cars. They’re two wildly different cars, but both represent a sort of more compact take on the police car, though they’re nine years apart. One is a 1987 Volkswagen Passat five-door fastback, the other is a 1978 Ford Fairmont.

I don’t really know why both German and American police cars showed up, but here we are. Maybe you decided to commit your sick crime on the border of an American army base in Germany? That’s only something you can answer, sicko.

Anyway, let’s look at our cop cars:

The Passat is a second-generation one, and one of the post-1985 facelifted ones. Let’s assume it has the interesting inline-5 engine, making about 120 hp. The Fairmont was built on the Fox body platform, and in cop guise had the 4.9-liter Windsor V8, making about 139 hp, or could be had with the straight-six making 85 hp, depending on if the local police department were cheapskates or not.

What other features do we have?

The Passat has a nice big hatchback, and an illuminated sign that reads FOLGEN, which I thought at first was German for “consequences,” which is a hell of a light to have on a cop car, not entirely unwarranted, but it turns out it’s more likely it means “follow.” So, I guess instead of pulling people over, they get in front of them and ask them to follow?

It’s also green and white, and has a lone rotating light and siren unit on the roof.

The Fairmont cop package, on the other hand, has a full-width light/siren bar, and a bunch of other upgrades that I can actually understand, because they’re in English. The Coolant Recovery System I’m not really sure about, though. What is that doing? Capturing leaking antifreeze? For…what?

Also, if I was a cop, I might take a little bit of offense to the “Heavy-Duty Front Seat” entry there.

So which will it be? Crammed into the Teutonic emerald-and-white Passat, or flung into the back of that boxy, blue Fairmont? Which car will it be? Try not to let your opinions on if you want to get worked over by American police or German Polizei affect your decision – we’re just here to talk about the cop cars!

Let’s discuss, debate, debrief, depilate!