Back in 2012, I visited a police equipment show in Beijing, my favorite kind of event, with lots of police cars on show.
Chinese automaker SAIC had a big booth, showing some of their best cars in police livery. First up a Roewe 750, looking very nice as a cop car. The Roewe 750 was based on the Rover 75. In 2005, SAIC bought the rights to the Rover 75 + engines from bankrupt MG Rover. However, they didn’t get the Rover name so they came up with Roewe. The brand still exists today. In 2012 you could still get a brand-new 750 with a 1.8 turbo or a 2.5 liter V6. Price started at 162.800 yuan. Production ended in 2016.
We continue with a Roewe W5 SUV. The Roewe W5 had an interesting history too. From 2004 until 2009 SAIC owned a majority of shares in troubled Korean car maker Ssangyong. There was a lot of unrest and distrust, but SAIC managed to use the Ssangyong Kyron as a base for their own Roewe W5. They shipped over the production line to Shanghai and started making the W5 in 2011. Buyers could choose between a 1.8 turbo, the same engine as in the 750, or a SsangYong 3.2 liter inline six, which was originally a Mercedes-Benz motor. Sales of the W5 were slow. It was a dated car and it was expensive. In 2012 a new one sold for 171.800 yuan. Production ended in 2017.
The characters on the hood are 警察, Jǐngchá, police. The characters on the rear-side door are 公安, Gōng’ān, public security. Every Chinese police car has these characters in those places, normally with the English word ‘police’ on the hood, below the Chinese text.
The car is a Roewe 550. It was derived from the MG Rover RDX60 project. This was a compact sedan under development at MG Rover but it never reached production when the company went bankrupt. SAIC bought the blueprints for the project and used them to create the Roewe 550. It was launched in 2008 and production ended in 2016. In 2012 you could get one with a 1.8 or a 1.8 turbo. The price started at only 99.900 yuan for the base model, which was a steal of a deal.
And this is a Roewe 350 police car. The 350 was the smallest Roewe sedan. It was made for a relatively short time, from 2010 until 2014. The 350 had, again, a foreign history. It was derived from the Ssangyong B100, a project for a small sedan for the Korean market. The B100 never reached production but SAIC used the blueprints to develop the 350. In 2012 you could have it with a 1.5 or a 1.5 turbo. The price started at 89.700 yuan.
SAIC had also a Roewe 950 sedan on show. Not a police car but still cool. And again, the 950 wasn’t entirely Chinese. The 950 was based on the second-generation Buick LaCrosse, which was made in China at the SAIC-GM joint venture. In China, it was, and still is, very common for Chinese brands to use cars made by their joint venture as a base for their own-branded cars. The 950 was the largest Roewe sedan at the time. It was produced from 2012 to 2019, so when I saw this one it was basically brand new. In 2012 you could get one with a 2.0, a 2.4, and a 3.0-liter V6. The base 2.0 model went for 168.800 yuan but the V6 cost almost double that at 319.900.
Another Roewe W5 in SWAT livery. This one was not on the SAIC booth but with a company that made police-car equipment like light bars and communications gear.
In the real world, I have only seen the Roewe 550 as a police car. The Roewe 950 was used by the Shanghai government to ferry VIPs around. Too bad, because they all seemed more than ready to chase the bad guys.