Sad Max: Australian Police Reject Mustang As Falcon Replacement

[El Kabong]

"While the Mustang passed a brake test at the police driving academy in Goulburn, the car’s automatic transmission, which is a requirement for police vehicles, overheated after just three minutes of intense driving.

"The car was then forced into a 'limp home mode' and taken to a local Ford dealership for repairs."

Guess the fluid coolers are optional. Again. More at the link:

http://www.businessinsider.com.au/the-new-ford-mustang-isnt-good-enough-for-the-nsw-police-2016-3

Edited March 21, 2016 by El Kabong

[Drew Dowdell]

... that sounds.... strange. 

[ccap41]

OMG the Mustang is such a pile of $h!! 

 

   ( <- Mustang )

 

Everybody trade them, sell them, burn them to the ground because they aren't worth a damn thing with trannies blowing up left and right. Can't even keep the trannies in stock. They're just flying off the selves. 

[El Kabong]

... that sounds.... strange.

Police work in a hot climate, I suppose. The Falcon and Commodore were built for it.

[Drew Dowdell]

 

... that sounds.... strange.

Police work in a hot climate, I suppose. The Falcon and Commodore were built for it.

 

 

The Falcon just uses a 5-speed auto or a ZF 6-speed unit (not sure which the Police vehicles are equipped with) of no remarkable extra endurance.   Something smells fishy.

[Suaviloquent]

Police vehicles are treated like &#036;h&#33;. And they break down frequently.

 

In fact you'll see Police Vehicles more often than not undergoing "lifecyle renewal" projects - which are aka service requisitions because how the nature of the vehicles and how they are driven cause them to break.

 

Now, this being a Police version, what do they mean by intense driving?

 

Like seriously, if a Mustang is having a problem with intense driving, I fail to see how a Golf Wagon or Volvo Wagon will handle it any better.

[Drew Dowdell]

and in 3 minutes?  That's a pretty short timeline to failure.  That's not overheating from normal police use at the extreme end of the spectrum... that's outright banging on it to make it break.

[Suaviloquent]

That's Australia m'ate

[El Kabong]

I'm just quoting the source. It's legit enough that Jalopnik has linked to it as well. Which may or may not be a good thing depending on your opinion of Jalopnik, but I digress.

If I were to guess I'd say that Ford submitted the car thinking it wouldn't need a police package to compete. Either that or the NSW coppers just took it on themselves to evaluate the thing. Given Ford's recent turn to fleet sales though, I'm guessing option 1.

[surreal1272]

Just sounds like they got a lemon to me, especially if they only used one car for the test. It would seem to make more sense to rule such a thing out first but the article does not give any specifics to this, so who knows.

[Suaviloquent]

Eh, I think Ford got unlucky. 

 

Who cares. You win some you lose some. And seems like any other RWD contender under $100,000 also didn't make the cut.

 

So they're left with Golfs and and Volvos. Great if you're in Sweden, where your criminals all drive, oddly enough, Golfs and Volvos. Maybe more of the latter, but I digress.

 

Anyone criminal scum will just take a Falcon or Commodore and lay waste.