Police stop!

▶ BMW have announced that, with immediate effect, they will no longer be supplying police cars. This won’t, though, make much difference to anyone, as the police have pretty-much stopped buying BMWS anyway. This follows the massive and major problems they’ve been encountering recently with the N57 engines blowing up and some catching fire – problems which on one occasion led to a police officer being killed.

The official line from BMW is, in essence, that they’re struggling to make/import enough standard cars to meet demand, and it therefore makes no commercial sense to selling some of the cars they can get out as cut-price police vehicles.

The truth, I suspect, is slightly different, albeit still connected to the lower price of police-spec cars. Why are police-spec cars sold for, typically 60-70% of the prices we have to pay? Part of it is undoubtedly down to reduced spec levels, but the main reason is that manufacturers see use by emergency services as good publicity; if a car will withstand police use, it’ll certainly be good enough for the family.

If, though, the cars have a reputation for blowing up their engines under police traffic/emergency response use, then the reason for selling them cheaply no longer exists! In fact, their use by the police generates bad publicity even though it’s almost certainly the police use that causes the problems.

Meanwhile, many police forces seem to be deliberately wrecking engines on affected cars prior to sale, to avoid comeback. Others, it seems, are not. In a recent police vehicle auction at Brightwells of Leominster, we spotted a dozen N57-engined BMWS for sale from Yorkshire police forces, all with seized/holed engines and with listings stating quite specifically that the engines would need replacing.

However, three similar BMWS vehicles from Avon and Somerset Police were being sold in full running order.

Maybe operating conditions there are sufficiently different for the issues not to affect cars down there in the same way?