Maybe there’s a reason Oldsmobiles were so rarely seen as cop cars: their advertising agency was clueless. The artist who rendered this image of a couple of state troopers in their Oldsmobile put helmets on them. Really? I’ve never seen a cop other than one on motorcycles wearing helmets. Have you?
And that “State Police” sign on the hood is unlike any I’ve ever seen.
Police…Don’t Call Olds 1967!
Los Angeles County Sheriff required their on duty uniformed deputies to wear helmets in their cars, for many years.
California Highway Patrol bought Oldsmobiles for their patrol fleet in 1967. They were generally disliked. Oldsmobile must have qualified in testing and then lowballed the bid to get the business away from Dodge, but in 1968 and 1969, Dodge got the order back.
That sideways “State Police” sign on the hood is the same style as was used in some Canada (and perhaps some USA) agencies in the 1960s. It was illuminated and when turned ON, presumably as the officer pulled alongside a violator, would flash “STOP.”
Lots of stories about the CHP going to Olds (Delmont 88’s) in ’67. One was then governor Ronald Reagan was questioning some of the state’s procurement procedures and it was noted the the California Highway Patrol had awarded all pursuit vehicle purchase contracts to Chrysler for 10 years. I don’t think any impropriety was ever discovered, but Olds got the contract in ’67 ‘just because’. I don’t think the Demont’s were all that bad, but the front bumpers were prone to damage (or caused damage) when pushing disabled cars off the freeway.
I seen old photos of the Michigan State Police cars with that same sign on the hood. Helmet wearing protected the officers during pursuits as just wearing lap belts did not offer much protection .
long time lurker here, so I apologize for the snarky comments:
– probably the artist could not draw hair or only “helmet hair” !
– maybe the sign says pizza on the other side (looks like a pizza delivery sign you would see on a roof!)
Shorty yells from the back seat, “LOOK OUT BOSS – HERE COMES THE FASHION POLICE! RIGHT ON YOUR TAIL!”
Boss responded, “IT’S THEM ALL RIGHT! I RECOGNIZE THEIR FLORINTINE GOLD METALLIC OLDSMOBILE DELMONT 88 HOLIDAY SEDAN WITH THE OPTIONAL BLACK VINYL LEATHERETTE ROOF!”
Shorty asks, “WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO BOSS?”
Boss advises, “Shorty – tuck in your shirt, straighten your tie, tie your shoes, and we just got to hope for the best with these guys – they mean business – they’re wearing their pearl helmets over their perfectly groomed hair and they never mess up their hair unless they mean business!”
MSP has used signs on the hood for ages and apparently still do, though they are powered and say “stop”, but I’m guessing that is where the people who drew the picture got the idea.
No cop car I’ve seen has skinny whitewall tires
Came here to second Michigan. They’ve had the placard going down the middle of their hood for decades. Doubtless, that is where the ad agency (presumably located in Detroit) got its inspiration.
Does anyone have any insight as to the how and why Michigan continues, to this day, to use the ancient red ‘gumball’ roof lights when it seems like everyone else, long ago, switched to more aerodynamic lightbars that use both blue and red lights? They just seem so strange and outdated.
I can only surmise that it’s cheapier and easier to install, then transfer and reuse them to the next cop-car. The flipside is that, unlike lightbars, a hole has to be drilled through the middle of the roof, making the cars’ value much less for resale.
This issue is discussed on several cop car FB pages. MSP has upgraded their Unity rotating lights with LED lights which they claim are brighter and more noticeable that the thin light bar lighting system. They also install lights on each mirror and lights in the grille area. There are many fans of their traditional, and updated, single red light on top. Georgia State Patrol has some cars with a single blue light on top.
Seems odd that if they believe that their red gumball light is more noticeable then that they also need a silly hood sign saying “STOP” which can only be seen if they pull up along side the miscreant…who obviously missed the flashing red signal in their rearview mirror indicating the need to pull over and stop.
Hummmmm.
Hawaii also has a single blue light on the roof.
Found this while doing a quick google search:
Apparently for less wind resistance
I’m just surprised a change in police car light technology made the local TV news at all.
Here in Maryland, a red bubble light would only be fitted to non-police emergency cars like ambulances and fire support vehicles. Police cars have alternating blue and red lights; blue lights are illegal on non-police cars (although I see that violated frequently). Bubble lights with rotating reflector bulbs were once the norm, but at some point they were phased out in favor of full-width light bars still with rotating reflector bulbs, which were later replaced with full-width flashing LED bars that allowed for a much smaller surface area for less drag. New police cruisers (usually either Dodge Chargers or Ford Explorer-based Police Interceptors) have flashing LEDs stuffed in every conceivable nook and cranny.
One notable change in recent years is that many police cars leave their overhead red and blue lights on, at low intensity and not flashing, at nighttime. Not sure why this is – it seems likely to reduce stops for traffic violations, but discourages traffic violations in the first place (yay! placing public safety over collecting more money from fines), and also makes clear there’s a high law enforcement presence.
Fox 47 is in Lansing, the state capitol. MSP has a test track just outside of Lansing, which is probably where it was shot. Great filler for a slow news day, which Lansing has a lot of.
The violators of the Maryland law regarding no blue lights on your personal car all seem to be scofflaws driving down here from Pennsylvania.
I think PA lets their volunteer firefighters get away with mounting blue flashing lights on their cars up there. Why the MSP doesn’t pull them over is beyond me, but I see it all the time, especially in Northern Baltimore County.
To Marylanders such as ourselves, that seems odd anyway, as everyone here knows fire vehicle emergency lights should be red and white!
I’m surprised Paul doesn’t remember the L.A.S.O. and L.A.P.D. wearing helmets in patrol cars in the 1970’s, I too thought it ridiculous .
look at old cop movies like “The New Centurians” to see this and also see some big time movie stars early in their careers .
F. Morton Pitt was the big supplier of these helmets at that time .
-Nate
And the movie “Vanishing Point”. Helmeted cops can be seen during some of the chase scenes.
@Paul ;
Just so ~ I loved that movie when it came out, in the beginning they even have an old Harley-Davidson PanHead cop bike…..
-Nate
Ask Jayne Mansfield…
Back in the 80s, David Davis of Car & Driver advocated helmets in cars as an alternative to airbags. He noted 80% of traffic accident fatalities were from head injuries. Like race car drivers, helmets for ordinary people would make driving significantly safer without the cost, complexity and hazards of airbags.
His editorial was somewhat tongue in cheek but it centered on people taking personal responsibility for their safety rather than have the government regulate a solution.
Yes Davis sometimes was a schill for Detroit automakers’ self serving interests but he had a point. Even a lightweight helmet, like a ski or hockey helmet would make travel in non-airbag cars safer.
Yes, but Davis was also fond of ascots. So it was all really just a fashion statement 🙂
Maybe or not—likely not. It’s certainly not a given; being inside a car is not the same as being on a motorcycle or ski slope or ice rink.
…which was the automakers’ version of the tobacco industry’s disingenuous babble about ‘adults who choose to smoke’.
That “personal responsibility” bilge held sway for a lot of years, during which traffic-related death, disfigurement, injury, and property damage kept getting worse and worse and worse. They only started getting better and better and better once the big ol’ bad ol’ mean ol’ nasty ol’ terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad government began enforcing vehicle safety standards.
If you wish more knowledge on the subject, see here
Davis was generally a jerk who never met a mandated auto safety feature he ever liked. Totally in the tank for the U.S. auto industry, who for decades blamed “the nut behind the wheel” for most traffic fatalities.
Those buff book writers were all alike in that regard: Davis, Yates (C&D), Tomerlin (R&T), Dahlquist and Knepper (MT).
Yeah , apparently it was a thing. “Diamonds are Forever” (1971) clip
1:25….
I never noticed it before, but some parts of the Diamonds are Forever chase scene are very reminiscent of The Blues Brothers, specifically the early chase through the Dixie Square Mall parking lot and, later, the shear number of cop-cars used in the film’s climax.
The Blues Brothers parodied many 70s movie car chases, it’s ironic since the filming and stunts were so top notch you almost forget they’re playing for comedy.
It reminds me of one of those dime store cars of a Cadillac hearse painted red with “Fire Department” written on the side and a big round red flashing light that is too large proportionally glued to the roof. Something got lost in the translation.
It looks very cheesy.
Like one of those “American-style” t-shirts with strange looking graphics printed on them, like “GO-GO AMERICAN SPORTS TEAM!” or “SUPER-FAST CAR!”. At first glance they’d look legit, but upon closer look, are obviously from some place very different. I bought one in Germany that had a football player running across it with “HOME RUN!” across the top.
If I saw this on a t-shirt, I’d think it was hilarious enough to buy it.
Didnt either the LAPD or CHP use Oldsmobiles for a very short time and found them [AHEM] Lacking?
This got me curious about the helmet thing — just looked it up, and in fact all Southern California police departments required on-duty officers to wear helmets in the 1960s. The departments started to peel that back under the premise that the helmets “dehumanized” police officers, and that when people’s facial features are covered up, other people tend to view them “as things, or robots” rather than as real people (according to one police chief at the time).
The picture below is from when one police department switched to being helmetless – “a more human and less menacing appearance”:
That’s very interesting. I thought that looking “menacing ” was one of the goals of police uniforms. Certainly Hugo Boss understood this when he designed the uniforms for the SS, which look remarkably similar.
Maybe something other than black would help. Maybe grey slacks and a blue blazer?
Maybe the change was inspired by the faceless android police in George Lucas’ first film, 1971’s THX 1138.
Did not NYPD get rid of the black leather jackets for the same reason. Shades of Nazi tank commander.
I still remember the CHP Delmont 88’s which came and went quite quickly. Not only was it weird to see an Olds police car, but in fact at that time I don’t recall any other GM police cars in the area. Only Ford or Dodge/Plymouth, maybe the occasional Mercury. All that changed within a few years, as Nova’s, Malibu’s and then Caprice and Tahoe became popular. Now we’re back with pretty much all Ford and Dodge, except for the occasional Tahoe. None with whitewall tires, even in 1967.
Many smaller agencies in California went in and bought whatever the CHP bought that year, including my hometown of Redondo Beach. A huge manual steered car was probably not the best choice for a beach town with many narrow streets.
Here is a good writeup on the CHP Delmont 88: https://code3garage.com/category/oldsmobile/
I can think of a specific Olds Delmont 88 where helmets should have been worn.
Simple – the helmets were to protect the occupants from the explosion on the roof. 🙂
In real life or on television, I don’t think I can ever recall seeing an Oldsmobile police car. Indiana State Police used Mercurys for at least one year, and both Buick (Highway Patrol) and Pontiac (driven by Buford T. Justice in Smoky & the Bandit) were seen every now and then. But never Oldsmobile.
Back in 1984, when the full size Bonneville came back as a Parisienne after it’s one year hiatus, I saw and parked next to a Maryland State Police car at a 7-Eleven and was very surprised to see it was a Pontiac and not a Chevy, as the rest of the the fleet were Caprices at that time. Not that there was much of a difference between the Parisienne and the Caprice in 1984.
I never did find out what was up with that. Maybe a mix up in the fleet purchase, perhaps? Who knows? But I’d never seen another one since.
Here are a few screenshots of 1967 CHP Olds police cars from the Internet Movie Car Database (www.imcdb.org)
https://www.imcdb.org/vehicle_399290-Oldsmobile-Delmont-88-1967.html
https://www.imcdb.org/vehicle_374576-Oldsmobile-Delmont-88-1967.html
https://www.imcdb.org/vehicle_604180-Oldsmobile-Delmont-88-1967.html
This is a fascinating diversion! I knew nothing of the Michigan “Stop” signs until today(?!).
They ordered the cop car in Florentine Gold with black vinyl top??
The real question is “why are the officers wearing sunglasses at night?”
So they can, so they can:
• Watch you weave then breathe your story lines;
• Keep track of the visions in their eyes;
• Forget their name while you collect your claim, and
• See the light that’s right before their eyes.
Made me chuckle, D
Never surrender Daniel.
There are so many errors in this pic, it’s a wonder anyone took Olds’ bid for police vehicles seriously at all!
Let’s see, apart from the odd police sign (some jurisdictions), old-style light (some jurisdictions), and helmets (ditto), there’s the whitewalls (like City Hall would lay out the extra for them!), the colour scheme (nice on a civilian car but…), the sunnies-at-night…….
It’s like one of those pictures in children’s books: “How many errors can you spot?”
GM might have thought Olds cop cars were a good bet because Olds was the “towing specialist” in those days. Olds had heavy-duty suspensions and drivetrains already available to the assembly line.
All included in the price then . The Olds could not have been as bad as the Montego with out power steering…
The CHP had these for one year, 1967. Plenty of power from the 370 h.p. 425, but poor brakes and problematic overall. The front fender edges also extended out past the push bar, easily crumpling them. Got to the point the CHP stopped repairing them.
The CHP had some unusual specs for their cruisers at the time, notably a white steering wheel. These also had power disc brakes, but manual steering and no A/C. Must have been a bear driving one of these in city traffic.
CHP cruisers didn’t get power steering until 1971, when manufacturers started to make it standard equipment on full size vehicles. A/C also first appeared in 1971, first on units assigned to desert areas, then the rest of the fleet.
An interesting story regarding A/C cop cars – In the late sixties the FBI specified all their vehicles be basic, fairly low optioned full size cars spread among all American manufacturers. None had A/C. The 1968 fleet purchase included quite a few AMC Ambassadors, which qualified as an American full size offering. These Ambassadors included factory A/C, as AMC made it standard in the Ambassador starting that year. Of course J. Edgar Hoover couldn’t have some of his agents in A/C cars and some not, so he ordered all field offices to have the Ambassadors A/C disabled.
Regarding the helmets in a street car theme, I’ve see it once at a car show. A 50’s F 100 with lap seat belts only, and a pair of open face helmets on the seat.