Danno

Excellent.

Very nice!

Nice.

Very, very nice!! Looks just like the 1:1 I once had. Well, sorta. Great job!

Nice job, G! I can almost see a young Sergeant Dan Matthews patrolling Highway 101 practicing his oral boards responses for the future Superintendent's promotion. Guess I should build one. Shoot! Guess I should build anything!

Nice job, G! I can almost see a young Sergeant Dan Matthews patrolling Highway 101 practicing his oral boards responses for the future Superintendent's promotion. Guess I should build one. Shoot! Guess I should build anything!

Green and white is unique! But then, the Border Patrol would be jealous.

For many years, Wichita (KS) PD ran white cars with black hoods (no one I knew ever knew why), beacon mounted on the roof, and (most of them) a "stop - police" light on the right front fender, radio antenna on the rear fender, spotlight on the A pillar, and a gold foil badge on the door with "police" in gold foil letters arched over the badge. In 1970, somebody came up with a plan to improve resale value for retired patrol cars. They ordered a fleet of 1970 Dodge Coronet sedans in random factory colors with no pillar-mounted spotlights. The cars were equipped with gutter-mount Federal Visibars that had front and rear facing reflective signs between the beacons and the siren speaker - one side said "Wichita," the other side said "Police." They mounted the radio antenna on the light bar. They had hand-held spotlights in the interior. The end result was that there were no sticky graphics anywhere on the car body, the vehicles were random factory colors, and there were no holes in the bodies. It was very modern, and accomplished what they were after. Kinda different, kinda neat. They still had a good supply of 1968 and 1969 Fords in service that were still white with black hoods and the foil graphics. They cycled those vehicles through the street department's body shop and had them all painted various colors ... whatever the shop had on hand. Then came a very low-mileage 1968 Ford that had been assigned to the airport. Very low mileage, so it was a long way from retirement despite being two years old. The shop had a gallon of baby blue. The '68 Ford rolled out of the shop with the new gutter mount Visibar setup and ... sparkled in its baby blue glory. It was hideous. And rather effeminate. Officers fought over it ~ none would drive it. Rumor had it that some guys even went home "sick" rather than drive it. After a year ... and still unbelievably low mileage ... it was surplussed ... but didn't sell at auction. They repainted it black and it sold right away. Wichita PD never had a baby blue police car again.

You gonna milk this for all it's worth?

Uh-oh.

Some agencies just can't justify the expense of changing existing vehicles to a new scheme, especially if they have a large percentage of vehicles already close ~ or well on their way ~ to retirement. So, they just rotate the new markings in through attrition (new vehicles replacing old vehicles). Other agencies don't want to have the confusion so they budget for a complete changeover. Even so, they generally start re-marking the lower mileage vehicles first ... and silently hope some the high mileage units will breakdown or crash before their turn for remarking ~ thus saving some money. And you still haven't asked me about the baby blue patrol car! The story fits right in ... here.

I've had the same experience (failure to upload a post) quite often, when I've tried to use the black "Post" button at the bottom right corner of a topic. Usually happens 60% - 80% of the posts I've tried to enter. But I've found one sure-fire work-around: Use the black "Reply to this Topic" button at the upper right corner of the thread instead. Works first time every time. At least for me. Your mileage may differ.

Not only that, but another reason may be that changing graphics actually resulted in a decrease of per-vehicle costs and related increase of resale value when the vehicles were surplussed. An example. As products improved and new materials became available, the per-unit costs typically went down. Maintaining use of an older graphic (scheme and material) may have been more expensive than buying a newer graphic in a new material. And, in the past, the supplier selling the graphics often kept the copyright on the scheme. The only way an agency could realize an expense reduction was to change to a different supplier ... and that supplier could not replicate the existing markings without violating their competitor's copyright. An agency I worked for went through this. In addition, we had a chief once who purchased an artsy, elegant, and expensive marking scheme, then had all the vehicles converted to it. As they were damaged and required refinishing, or as they required replacement, the expense of purchasing replacement marking packages escalated to the point that the city's beer budget would no longer support his champagne tastes. We had to change markings again. Most agencies view their vehicle markings (and officer uniforms) as a huge part of their "brand" and public image. It is very common for a change in leadership (new chief or newly elected sheriff) to result in a make-over of the appearance of the agency (read that - new uniforms in different colors or new vehicle markings or colors) just to reinforce that the old guy is gone and there's a new boss in charge. Sometimes new materials or technologies make trendy things more cost-effective than the old stuff. And fads sweep the law enforcement community as well as anywhere else. For a time, foil markings were the big thing. Then stripes ~ especially reflective stripes ~ were huge. Then there was the stealth craze (grey markings on black cars). Now, it seems like everybody is going back to black and white. The old markings that looked great on plain white cars often doesn't work well on the black fenders. More change. Just as an FYI ... interestingly, none of this has ever seemed to affect the Denver Police Department. Their uniforms have remained the same since time began, their badges have never changed, and their vehicles carry the same colors (white) and markings since the late forties. Talk about consistency!

No doubt the same basic genus as the 'most likely' story I subscribe. Superintendent / commissioner ... still the boss. Love them stories of the Highway Patrol!

That's ... mooo ving.

Exquisite!

Oh. Well, yeah!! Agreed!

Nice.

There are at least two versions floating around: (1) The show aired from 1955 - 1959. The California Highway Patrol Commissioner at the time used "21-50" as his radio call signature. (2) CHP used the two part radio numbers to identify the substation and officer, thus "21-50" was substation '21,' officer '50.' At that time, the Napa Valley substation was station 21, unknown why it was chosen. The officer number was randomly selected because it sounded good with the '21.' Real reason? Who knows for sure. I was too young to have 1st-hand knowledge. What info do you have, G?

LOL. Yeah, preachin' to the choir! I'm twice the man I used to be. {On the scale, anyway.}

Well, if Alex has it figured out ... maybe he would share his technique with us. If it works for Ferraris, it should work for Jags and Vettes, too.

He is a stellar performer! His products are great! And he's an all-around nice guy.

Nice.

Oooweeeee! "Headquarters to 21-50. Is Ponch with you?" :lol:

Wheeeeee! Hollywood's on the loose again!