None of us feel comfortable being followed by a Police car, even when we’ve done nothing wrong. Police cars come in all shapes and sizes and pretty much all makes, but in 37 of the UK’s 52 Police Authority areas, the chances are that it’s a Vauxhall that’s going to be behind you as Vauxhall has just won a tender to supply vehicles to a further 6 Police regions meaning they will now have contracts in place with 71% of Police authorities.
Winning the recent tender will see Vauxhall become the biggest supplier of what’s referred to as “low and intermediate Police vehicles” in the UK and will see Vauxhall delivering around 7,000 cars and vans in the next 4 years. Seems all Vauxhall models will be included with Insignia, Astra and Corsa making the bulk of the cars, whilst Vivaro, Combo, Movano and Astravan making up the commercial side.
Vauxhall say that they won the tenders because the vehicles offered good value for money, low emissions and what’s referred to as the ‘Turnkey Vehicle Initiative’ providing rapid turnaround of replacement vehicles, service and support. Vauxhall have also worked closely with ACPO to develop ‘Single Vehicle Architecture’ (SVA) which will provide a standard specification to which all manufacturers and suppliers can adhere to. This will allow things like standardised wiring for the extra equipment that the Police have to have fitted in their vehicles, effectively making everything electronic become ‘plug and play’. This will mean that new Police cars can be kitted out quickly and when its time for them to be disposed of, the decommissioning will much easier and quicker.
The Police contracts will see everything done in-house by Vauxhall and this will allow Vauxhall much more control of the entire process. In fact the only outsourced thing will be the eventual delivery of the vehicles to the Police forces.
This is all good news for Vauxhall, but then is it? Its going to mean that a fairly high number of ‘used ex Police Vauxhalls’ will eventually find there way into the second hand market and whilst I wouldn’t want to buy one, obviously there will be buyers that will and I would suggest that the cars will probably sell for less than a used vehicle that wasn’t an ex police vehicle. The question is, will these lower priced vehicles entering the used market have an affect on the values of other ‘non Police used’ Vauxhalls? Clearly, used buyers would be wise to find out the history of the used Vauxhall they are intending to buy in future.
