COP SKYLINES

Hi, I’ve been re-reading edition 426, your Jap Cars Special, and found the article about the Nissan GTS Skyline to be most interesting. I have to admit, I’m one of the Tassie cops that had the pleasure of driving these at work. We were supplied with the Series 1 as a General Traffic car and found it to be one of the better cars for the job that we’d had.

You’ve got to remember we only had XF/EA Falcons and VN/VP Commodores to compare it with, but when you were spending up to 6-8 hours a day in the car, those Scheel seats and air conditioning were a pleasure. Yes, they were one of the first cars in the f leet to come with air con! Our section put over 100,000 kms on the Series 1 as we had a delay to taking possession of the Series 2. The main problem was that the Series 2 only came in red; at the time, our f leet vehicles had to be white. Nissan sourced six white bodies and constructed the Police Specials from them.

They were un-numbered but still carried NSV badges and had Series 2 running gear. These would have to be the rarest of the Series 2 GTS but not sure if they could be counted officially.

To my knowledge the vehicles performed very well, there was some problem with what I seem to recall as alignment of gearbox and drive train which was sorted after initial teething problems. The locals thought at the time that we were running the turbo charged RB20 motors that were used for touring car racing at around the same time, so we never lifted the bonnet in public. All the guys that drove these vehicles remember them fondly. A special driving course was conducted for all those using the cars, so we could get the best out of them. When the Series 2 was ending its term, the department looked at replacing them with Subaru Turbos but we had a change of Commissioner and that was vetoed and we reverted back to the current Fords and Holdens with orange stripes fitted, that made all the difference !

Just thought I’d fill in a few gaps for those interested.

Garry Turner Via Email

ED: Thanks for giving Nissan collectors a heads-up Garry and for filling in the gaps. Glad you and your fellow boysin-blue enjoyed the GTS Skylines.