Both vehicles involved in the accident are Beetles, and the Police shows up in a black and white… Beetle. Germany; around 1960, I’d say. Good thing nobody appears too injured, otherwise they’d be riding in a VW bus ambulance. Here’s another one:
This one looks a bit more serious, at least for the VW. And this time the Police came in their bus, none too quickly. And there’s a VW waiting to get through.
Doesn’t look like the dark-colored Beetle in the second photo had laminated safety windshield …
European cars didn’t have laminated windshields in the 1960s. I’m not sure when they got them but I know for sure that my family’s 1966 Simca 1000 didn’t. One day returning from Paris to Vaucresson on the Autoroute, a truck threw up a stone and it hit the Simca’s windshield. The exploding windshield sounded like a gun going off. I had to look out the driver’s side window to see where I was going. Pretty scary.
Early European Beetle windshields were tempered, and some had an oval, untempered portion immediately in front of the driver, so that all vision wouldn’t be obscured in the event of breakage.
Laminated windscreens are a recent innovation Ive had many shattered windscreens on 70s cars
Laminated auto glass was introduced in the 1920′s – Ford began using it across the board in 1929.
It looks like a pair of Squids being grilled in the first pic.
When I spent time in Germany in the mid 80s die Polizei drove Golfs. Green and white.
I was in Germany in Febrary 1987 and in Munich, they Politzei were driving green & white BMW 5-Series.
In Germany, the brand of the cop cars generally depends on location: in Munich and the rest of Bavaria, they’re usually BMWs (unless they’re using Audis), in Baden-Württemberg, they’ll use Mercedeses as they originate there, Opels in Hessen and Rheinland-Pfalz, Fords in Nordrhein-Westfalen, VWs in Lower Saxony (where the first photo seems to have been taken) and Saxony etc. although this is not a golden rule, particularly when it comes to vans. A few years back the Berlin police switched from BMW 5-series to VW Tourans because too many were crashed at high speed. The only real certainty is that all police cars are Made In Germany!
Dang German beer….
What did the dark beetle collide with. Looks sort of English Ford..ish. It looks like it came out better than the vw.
Is the other car in the second picture a Ford Taunus (17M or similar) … with the V4 also used by Saab?
Yes.
I beg to differ… this 1st gen ‘Badewane(?)’ Taunus 17m had an in-line 4 (60 DIN hp on basic models).
My brother and me spent a long part of our youths fuming at the back of a very basic 2-door model (whishing our father had bought the Peugeot 404 in place of that thing)..
V4 (and V6) came with the second generation which was also, personal opinion, a bit nicer to look at.
Reminds me of a photo I once saw, undoubtedly taken in either the U.S. or Canada, depicting a 1957 Chevrolet police car responding to an accident involving two other cars, both of them also ’57 Chevys….
I rented a Charger when I was in LA last weekend and ended up getting pulled over by a cop in… another Charger! Remarkable only in the fact that we were probably the only people driving Dodges for 5 square miles. While Detroit is obviously domestic-centric, we still have a good representation of Japanese and European cars on the road. Southern California is about as homogeneous as it gets. At one point I was following my aunt to a restaurant (she was driving a grey Altima) and without noticing it, I started following a grey Accord instead. I’m quite good at telling the difference between models, but I got totally lost in the sea of boring, late-model Japanese cars.
Interesting comment on the regional preferences in Germany. Was that true in auto towns in the Midwest? Here in the San Francisco Bay Area we had a Ford plant in Milpitas (now a mall) and a GM plant in Fremont (later the NUMMI GM-Toyota venture and now Tesla). Fremont police always used GM and Milpitas used Ford. Perhaps not so unusual now, but in rhe late ’70’s to mid ’80’s when everywhere else in California you saw only Mopar patrol cars, this really stood out, especially Fremont’s late ’70’s LeMans cruisers (the plant built A-bodies). .
Back in the day Michigan was a real treat because Lansing would use Oldsmobile cop cars and Flint would use Buick cop cars and so on…
After I suffered the exploding windshield in the ’66 Simca, I drove home with great trepidation. My father had sold the car since we had been relocated to the US and had told me not to screw it up. I carefully closed the door when I got out at our apartment (I had cracked the driver’s side window open-the Simca was like a V-Dub with an airtight cabin) and waited for my Dad to get home from work. He took the news rather well and suggested that we drive to our favorite Tabac for dinner. After telling us all to close the doors gently, he slammed his shut and the windshield caved in on us in the front seat. It made for a good laugh and an even better dinner.