No more BMW police cars

[premmington]

One of the poultry farms I work on is at a WW2 airbase it's one of the very few that still has all it's 3 runways intact it was an American bomber base so the runways are huge 2200 meters long by 100 wide. The police occasionally bring some confiscated/ impounded cars and rag them around the runways. They call it training. When they are finished a car transporter collects them takes them to the scrapyard.

Sculthorpe?

 

[Bornfree]

Sculthorpe?

No Weston green

 

[premmington]

No Weston green

Brize Norton? (or RAF Attlebridge 8miles north of Norwich?)

I had to google "weston green" - I've never heard of it?

 

[GRW]

View attachment 381189
An iconic car


Bear in mind that a lot of Police collisions, the majority perhaps? are the result of deliberate actions by criminals attempting to evade arrest and that others are deliberate tactics, employed to end dangerous incidents and prevent more serious incidents occurring. Its not unusual for 3 or more police cars to be wrecked in order to safely bring a dangerous situation to an end.
I'd also suggest that the majority of police drivers are very capable and well trained. Having said that, I've sat beside a few that I'd happily never share a car during a shift with again.

Some yes.... but where I live in SW Wales those kinds of operations aren't anything like as common and frequent.
The vast majority of "pursuits" here, is to pull some poor sod for exceeding the posted limit (& 99% not endangering anyone or anything).
There have been instances of coppers lunching motors fooling about and doing the sort of driving they are employed to stop the public from doing. Given a high-performance car to play with, with free fuel, tyres and a free pass to sod about - there are always those tempted to misbehave among them. My mate nearly got taken out on a back lane by a police car being ragged hard - he spun it on a singletrack lane, dead lucky not to bend it/total it (no blues & two's, we both knew the copper also - and he was on a joyride).

 

[Bornfree]

Brize Norton? (or RAF Attlebridge 8miles north of Norwich?)

I had to google "weston green" - I've never heard of it?

Attlebridge. Not sure why they called it attlebridge as it's closer to several other villages. If you look on Google maps you can see the size of it.

 

[redlig]

Sitting too long at idle keeping plods feet warm, then the same feet smashing the throttle down with all the nerners going to get home at the end of shift.Nothing in an engine is getting the same lube at idle as an engine at a rev.
BMW have had issues with supplying plod with vehicles, there was an issue with the bikes years ago going into a serious wobble,one officer was killed because of it. It was all denied until a camered up pursuit car that was following a bike got footage of this wobble, turns out the problem was unique to plod because of the way the bike was loaded with kit.

Bob

Wobble and weave. Remember it well BMW made a video of it.. Honda had a scare at the same time and I had the fun task of demonstrating it . I found that just moving my feet to the rear rests stopped it completely. It was also made worse by the customers trying to fight it and being pitched off. I had two firemen owners ,mates, complaining and wanting their money back. I got one of their bikes ,CX500 from memory, into a weave and rode passed them standing at the roadside controlling the bike only holding on with only one hand using using finger and thumb on twistgrip to show it wasn't going to chuck them off. Did the same testing the prototype CBX1000 in Germany at 130mph to prove to doubting Japs that they did have a problem and the bl**dy jap manager accused me of pulling on the bars so I did it one handed holding the front edge of the tank with my left hand. A white faced Jap had to agree that they did have a problem. Didn't make any difference as they started production 10 days after the test . The rest is history.

 

[James1979]

My tenere did that at about 60. It got bad up to about 80 but you could push through it. If you anticipated and adjusted yourself like you did then it wasn’t really an issue.

Did the same coming back down. Again not an issue but if you came back down quickly because you had to brake hard then it got interesting!

 

[finyuk2005]

Wonder if the next generation of police vehicles will be something like the electric Jaguar I-Pace ?

they are garbage, my uncles one has been all the way down from Orkney to Aberdeen on the back of a lorry 3 times in the short while they have had it already, they got a good trade in for the LR evoke at the time as the dealer messed it up with a software "update"!
Now he was talking about wanting a new defender.... i said he needs to stay well away from british made cars, or German for that matter!
Is any manufacturer reliable these days? can the Japanese still make good cars?

 

[redlig]

they are garbage, my uncles one has been all the way down from Orkney to Aberdeen on the back of a lorry 3 times in the short while they have had it already, they got a good trade in for the LR evoke at the time as the dealer messed it up with a software "update"!
Now he was talking about wanting a new defender.... i said he needs to stay well away from british made cars, or German for that matter!
Is any manufacturer reliable these days? can the Japanese still make good cars?

Out of the fry pan into the fire. Same firm same problems.

 

[finyuk2005]

Out of the fry pan into the fire. Same firm same problems.

to be fair, the jag does go like stink when it works!

 

[tom2207]

Cars are like welders ,,,, you buy a warranty , and they lend you a car [ or welder ] to go with it ...

its how the modern world seems to work .

 

[Robotstar5]

This just came up on Youtube, it explains the holes in the engines and after watching it I wouldn't buy a "low mileage" ex police car

 

[premmington]

This just came up on Youtube, it explains the holes in the engines and after watching it I wouldn't buy a "low mileage" ex police car

Yes police cars do get clocked ex auction - that is known fact.

But not as much as high mileage fleet vans before the first MOT - when they are on lease and have a mileage penalty. I reckon some vans get clocked every year for the first year and never serviced!

Shocking I know...

 

[fizzy]

Does anybody know what is actually failing?

The decision not to withdraw the vehicles was probably a perfectly good decision at the time.
Any high performance vehicle driven hard regularly, will be prone to catastrophic failure. Look at how often race engines need rebuilt to maintain performance and reliability.

A few years ago we maintained some police cars, and the rapid response ones would typically need new engines around 80k, after failing in some form or another.

I suspect the reason they say it doesn't concern civilian vehicles, is it's only a problem when driven for prolonged periods at high speed, which off course, civilian vehicles should never legally do..

Surprised nobody answered this unless I missed it.
Crankshaft bearing number 4 I think fails blocking oil supply to the other bearings. Then the crank seizes - con rods go and punch a hole in the sump or the block. Loads of failures.
And yet they kept buying BMWs. Surely after Brexit you would think they would at least try to put Britain first.
A mate of mine used to be on traffic - proper car nut and did quite a bit of rallying. Ended up as an instructor on the diplomatic protection squad. He much preferred the XF and the XJ to the BMWs.
The BMW estates would also wear out their back tyres every 500 miles. Inside edges would go due to camber problems when carrying all their kit in the boot.

 

[stuvy]

Yes police cars do get clocked ex auction - that is known fact.

But not as much as high mileage fleet vans before the first MOT - when they are on lease and have a mileage penalty. I reckon some vans get clocked every year for the first year and never serviced!

Shocking I know...

Iv still got a few mates in the trade and there are old school as the chap in the video put it dealers out there

On the other hand there is also greedy dealers and a host of other things like money laundering from other ill gotten gains

 

[Trevorleach]

My neighbour bought an Audi recently and it broke down on the motorway and had to be lifted. Less than 2000 miles on the clock and it needs a complete new engine.but there aren’t any available because they have a fault in them.
So his car will sit at the dealership until such time as a “fault free” engine can be obtained. Gathering dust, getting scratched and depreciating.
Meantime he’s having to pay for it.
I think it would come under the not fit for purpose Lemon umbrella and he should be able to get all his money back.
Anyway, don’t buy an Audi.
All my other neighbours with new cars have had big problems. Tesla, BMW, Audi,Volvo,Toyota, Nissan. Mostly the cars just refuse to go anywhere without notice.
My old tatty 55 plate Corsa that has been scorned by them, is suddenly not so shabby when they urgently need a lift. It starts first time, every time, has a heater and a radio. That’s more than I need. I do smile.

An Audi with an engine problem how unusual!

 

[fizzy]

An Audi with an engine problem how unusual!

The TFSi petrol engines were nightmare. Dodgy piston rings causing very high oil consumption from new. Fitted to about 300,000 cars in Britain alone including the SEATs and Skodas.
There was a class action law suit against Audi in the USA but many people in Britain were left out of pocket.
It amazes me how companies like Audi and BMW still have such a good reputation. If they were British cars with the same problems people would crucify them

 

[minimutly]

My tenere did that at about 60. It got bad up to about 80 but you could push through it. If you anticipated and adjusted yourself like you did then it wasn’t really an issue.

Did the same coming back down. Again not an issue but if you came back down quickly because you had to brake hard then it got interesting!

A speedwoble at 60 not an issue? I’d have burned the bloody thing there and then....

 

[minimutly]

The TFSi petrol engines were nightmare. Dodgy piston rings causing very high oil consumption from new. Fitted to about 300,000 cars in Britain alone including the SEATs and Skodas.
There was a class action law suit against Audi in the USA but many people in Britain were left out of pocket.
It amazes me how companies like Audi and BMW still have such a good reputation. If they were British cars with the same problems people would crucify them

Indeed...
Audi - heap of sh..te
I was looking to replace my 170k miles MGZT, looked at an A5, nice looker....
Bought a Jag XF 3 litre petrol.

 

[premmington]

Iv still got a few mates in the trade and there are old school as the chap in the video put it dealers out there

On the other hand there is also greedy dealers and a host of other things like money laundering from other ill gotten gains

I do believe this is another "motortrade sales" problem - (on a big hidden scale).


I think you would find small time drug money in the small trade. And big international Russian and Asian money in the big trade.

I don't think this unique to the motor sales trade at all - I think large scale property and rental purchases and a lot of big building projects would be the same too.

But the government VAT margin scheme for retailing used cars (not vans) - could have be written by a money launderer.