In Pursuit of the 2012 Chevrolet Caprice Cop Car

We've never owned a decommissioned police car, or ever contemplated attending a public auction with a wad of cash in an attempt to pick one up.

Two reasons: The wannabees that drive the damn things give us the creeps. We don't get off on watching traffic slow down and pack up ahead of us as folks twitch nervously in their rearview mirrors. We're not That Guy. And no matter how good the deal, the car waiting at the close of bidding is invariably a bloated dinosaur of a sedan, a seriously worked-over one at that.

Our tune started to change when the Dodge Charger Pursuit hit the streets in 2006, with its 5.7-liter Hemi V8 power, unibody construction, rear-wheel drive and independent rear suspension wrapped in a mean-looking skin.

But the one that's jump-started our inner Blues Brother is the 2012 Chevrolet Caprice PPV (Police Patrol Vehicle). Yes, that's right, a Caprice.

I Could've Had a G8
Let's be perfectly clear. We're not talking about the car the word "humongous" was invented to describe, that flabby shipwreck of a Caprice that disappeared from U.S. showrooms in 1996 to make room for more SUVs.

The 2012 Chevrolet Caprice PPV is a rebadged Australian car, designed and developed down under in 2006 by GM's Holden division alongside the Holden Commodore SS.

In Oz it's called the Holden Caprice; in the Middle East it's the Chevrolet Caprice. The Chinese know it as the Buick Park Avenue, which goes a long way toward explaining why the Chinese are huge Buick fans.

No matter what badge it wears, the 2012 Chevrolet Caprice is essentially a long-wheelbase version of the Commodore and the Pontiac G8 — 3.7 inches longer, to be exact. And the entirety of the extra span is allocated to the backseat, which gains 3.8 inches of legroom.

The Caprice cop car is still fast, and it sounds even faster because certain sound-deadening features have been pitched overboard.

Front-seat accommodations measure precisely the same as the G8 in all directions — even the front doors are direct carryovers. The entire body structure from the B-pillar forward is the same, in fact.

The Plight of the Perpetrators
Hold on a second. What's with all the concern about the comfort of perps in a cop car?

Relax. The extra space is consumed by a rear-seat barrier, that combination roll bar and dividing wall that police cars have to keep the alleged riffraff from messing with the arresting officer. Here the extra length of the Caprice allows that cage to be bolted aft of the front seat's rearmost position while still allowing a comfortable amount of recline.

In the end there's no surplus of space in back with a typical police barrier installed, but it's nothing like cruel and unusual punishment either. Besides, that roll bar will have been removed before you bring yours home from the Mt. Prospect city police auction.

As long as they don't mind vinyl seats and rubber floor mats, your perfectly innocent backseat passengers will be styling.

Up front, the 9C1 Patrol model features a special skinny console shifter mounted as far left as it can go, leaving a broad flat console onto which a pedestal mount for a laptop and other SCMODS-like police equipment can be bolted.

For auction-goers, however, the hot setup is going to be the 9C3 Detective model, with its proper center-mounted shift lever and intact cupholders. It'll probably come to the auction block never having had bleeding ruffians in the backseat, either.

Our Lady of Blessed Acceleration
Mechanically, the 2012 Chevrolet Caprice PPV is virtually indistinguishable from our 2008 Pontiac G8 GT long-termer. The same 6.0-liter pushrod V8 engine with cylinder deactivation resides under the hood. It's bolted to the same six-speed automatic transmission and the same limited-slip diff, and all of the gear ratios are carried over. There's just a longer driveshaft connecting the bits together, is all.

Municipal governments don't like paying for premium gas, though, and some of them prefer to use E85 ethanol, so the calibration of the mill has been tweaked to give it flex-fuel capability. Rated output sags slightly from 361 to 355 horsepower and from 385 to 384 pound-feet of torque. Expected mpg is unchanged at 15 city and 24 highway mpg.

The Caprice cop car is still fast, and it sounds even faster because certain sound-deadening features have been pitched overboard. There's no plastic engine cover, for example, no blanket on the underside of the hood. This thing honks.

But those weight-saving measures can't possibly offset the extra mass that comes with the additional steel in the longer body, and the Caprice PPV still packs 165 more pounds than a G8 GT. Chevy's claim of 6.0 seconds to 60 mph feels about right. Our departed 2008 Pontiac G8 GT got there in 5.4 seconds.

Cop Tires, Cop Suspension, Cop Shocks
The dip in acceleration can't be blamed entirely on weight and a flex-fuel calibration. Our Pontiac G8 GT hooked up through 19-inch summer tires, but the realities of year-round patrol duty and motor pool maintenance budgets puts the Caprice PPV on 18-inch all-season rubber. This also explains the predicted 15-foot increase in 60-0-mph stopping distance, from 109 to 125 feet, despite upsized front brake rotors to offset the weight.

The Caprice PPV rides on the same suspension bits as the G8: MacPherson struts with dual ball joints up front and a multilink setup out back. But a sharply reduced need to take backseat passenger comfort seriously allows a firmer suspension calibration, particularly in the rear. Our brief lapping session at GM's Milford Proving Grounds revealed a livelier rear end, with the longer wheelbase slowing the proceedings enough to keep it from becoming twitchy.

Stability control is present, but there's no off switch at the request of the loss prevention specialists of the police departments themselves. There's a reasonably permissive pursuit mode with higher limits, though, and it pairs quite nicely with the six-speed automatic's Sport shift mode, which holds onto lower gears even more tenaciously than the same setting did in our G8 GT.

No, You Can't Buy a New One
GM is not making the 2012 Chevrolet Caprice PPV available for public sale, so the new car's asking price of $31,495 has no meaning here. The best you can do is wait until they cycle through police service and come out the other side at auction and try to outbid the wannabees.

When will that be? It varies all over the country. Some large municipal departments accrue miles quickly, using a three-shift hot seat approach that keeps the cars in service nearly 24 hours a day. Others assign drive-home cars to a single officer.

GM tells us that patrol cars get sold off with anything between 50,000 and 100,000 miles on the clock, depending on the department. Some of these are resold to smaller rural entities without ever going to auction first.

We're still not convinced that buying a well-used pursuit vehicle of any sort is the right move for us. But the 2012 Chevrolet Caprice PPV is worth keeping an eye on. We're not That Guy, but we might be tempted by a car that is most definitely not a bloated geriatric dinosaur. If we can get it cheap enough, that is.

Edmunds attended a manufacturer-sponsored event, to which selected members of the press were invited, to facilitate this report