This 1974 Video Called Patrol Vehicle Operation: Emergency Driving Is Great – Recognize The Location?


This 1974 Video Called Patrol Vehicle Operation: Emergency Driving Is Great – Recognize The Location?

We love these old cop car driving videos. Not because they provide some incredible level of entertainment through the narration but because videos like this one called Patrol Vehicle Operation: Emergency Driving feature awesome old cop cars. In this case we are in the greater Los Angeles area and it is 1974 so you know what that means. Mopars! It also means looking at a familiar location. Rather than make you guess we’ll just come right out and tell you that this was made at the Pomona Fairplex and lots of time was spent on the drag strip where the NHRA Winternationals is run to this day. It looks a lot different now but you’ll see the little tower, the Cragar finish line signs, and the guardrails.

The best part of this video is the skidpad which is basically just a part of the parking lot at the Fairplex that got a bunch of this special “soap” splooged onto it making it slipperier than whale poop and the students in the class work on their car control at low speeds on this surface. The slides are nearly graceful and at super slow speeds, drivers can learn when they need to start steering to prevent ’em from getting worse. It looks really fun.

The cars used for many of the maneuvers are massive and cool. The massive Dodge Polaras are sweet but we’re really digging the Coronets that are used in a couple of the training exercises. Lots more fun looking than today’s blobby cop cars, that is for sure.

Oh the other thing about this video? Industrial strength side burns. Was it a law that everyone needed to have them back then?

Press play below to watch Patrol Vehicle Operation: Emergency Driving circa 1974 –


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2 thoughts on “This 1974 Video Called Patrol Vehicle Operation: Emergency Driving Is Great – Recognize The Location?

  1. Bill Greenwood

    You have to hand it to Chrysler. Those big C-bodies cornered pretty flat (for the era) and appeared to be neutral enough for the driver to have a certain amount of input over whether or not they were understeering or oversteering. It would be interesting to see how a 69-70 Fury or Polara with some modern suspension upgrades and rubber might compare to some modern muscle.
    Discs all around, 255-60-15 rubber, polyurethane suspension bushings, bigger anti-roll bars, and modern shocks might really wake up the handling even more.

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