About China's Coolest Cars
Back in the spring of 2010, I went to the great Chinese megacity of Chongqing for work. When I had time off, I went out to check cars. Not far from the banks of the Yangtze River, I bumped into a flock of Chinese police cars. The vehicles were unattended, just how I liked it, so I had a good look around.
Continue reading “Cool Chinese Police Cars In Chongqing, China, In 2010”
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.
Continue reading “SAIC Police Cars On The Police Equipment Show In Beijing In 2012”
This is a Beijing Weiwang 306 police van, seen in the Sanlitun embassy area in Beijing in December 2011. The van was brand new and looked very nice in police livery. It had a police light-siren unit on the roof but I didn’t see any additional lights on the bumpers.
Continue reading “Beijing Weiwang 306 Is A Cool Police Van In China”
A Honda Odyssey police car, seen in Beijing in 2010. However, it doesn’t belong to the local police force. According to the first character of the license plate, this police vehicle hailed from Hubei Province.
The character is 鄂, or ‘È’, is an ancient alternative name for Hubei. Now that we are into characters anyway, let’s do the rest as well: the red character on the right side of the plate is 警 (jing), short for 警察 (jingcha), which means police, and that’s on the bonnet as well. On the side is 公安 (gong’an), and that means public security. This is a general term used by various police forces.
The Honda Odyssey MPV is somewhat of an odd choice for a police car. The third-generation Odyssey was made in China from 2005 until 2009 by the Guangzhou-Honda joint venture, the successor of the second generation Odyssey. The China-spec Odyssey was powered by a 2.4 liter four-cylinder petrol engine with an output of 160 hp and 218 Nm, good for a 190 hp top speed. Just enough to catch some bad guys in, for example, an old Civic.
A Volkswagen Santana 2000 police car, seen at a police show in 2011. I always loved to go to police equipment shows in China to check out new police cars. I went there just for fun, but there were also real coppers shopping for new wheels. Naturally, they arrived with their own police cars, like this Volkswagen Santana 2000.
Continue reading “Volkswagen Santana And Passat Police Cars In China”
An enormous Hummer H2 SUV, owned by Beijing SWAT, seen in Beijing in 2012. It has white police license place and SWAT livery. The H2 looked totally badass with a giant bull bar, side bars, and a light bar and a police light bar on the roof.
Continue reading “A Big Bad American Beijing SWAT Hummer H2”
A Shuanghuan SCEO SUV seen near Chaoyang Park in east Beijing in 2010. The car looked nice in Chengguan livery but it also looked a bit tired. Always hard at work, we bet.
Continue reading “Beijing Chengguan Rides A Shuanghuan SCEO”
Here we have a cool Toyota Prius police car, seen in Beijing in 2011 with nice white 京·A1777 police license plates. The second generation Toyota Prius was quite popular as a police car in China, especially in the north.
When still in China, I loved to go to police equipment shows to check out new police cars. But whereas I was there just for fun, there were also real coppers shopping for new wheels for their department, and those coppers came by police cars.
So today we have a flock of real police cars on the police car show, with white police car license plates. This was in 2013. We start with this very pretty Beijing-Jeep Grand Cherokee police car, with the characters Jingcha (police) on the bonnet and the characters Sifa (judicature, for the Ministry of Justice) on the rear doors.
Continue reading “Real Police Cars On The Police Car Show In China”
A very pretty Hyundai Sonata police car in Beijing, painted in blue-white with a large lights & siren unit on the roof. I saw it in 2005 near Tiananmen Square, parked in a narrow street.
The fourth-generation (EF) Hyundai Sonata was the first generation Sonata that was made in China, by the Beijing-Hyundai joint venture. Production started in 2002 and continued all the way, with various updates, until 2017!
The police car has the 2.5 liter V6 under the bonnet, which was good for 164 hp and 225 Nm. Gearbox was a 4-speed automatic. The China-made Sonata was also available with various other engines, including a 2.0 and a 3.0 V6.
