It used to be so easy to spot a cop car in your rearview mirror. The Ford Crown Victoria dominated the police car world, and its design stayed vastly the same for decades. The glowing amber marker lights that bookended each headlight spoiled drivers by being easily identifiable in your rearview mirror, whether it was a black-and-white marked cop car or an unmarked one. To make things even easier for drivers with a penchant for bending the rules, it seemed like the number of civilian-owned Ford Crown Victorias roaming the streets was exponentially lower than the number of civilian Ford Explorers currently on the roads now that Ford’s SUV dominates modern police fleets.
Making matters worse, there are all sorts of other cars in use by police forces around the country, especially as unmarked cop cars. Now, I’m not insinuating that Jalopnik readers like to speed, but it seems like any car on the road might be a cop car these days, and that thought brought me to today’s question of the day: What’s the weirdest unmarked cop car you’ve ever seen?
I’m the type of person who can identify almost any car just by seeing its headlights in my mirror, but I was on the freeway the other day when I noticed some strange features on a seemingly normal three-row SUV that gave away its piggy affiliation — it was an unmarked Subaru Ascent being used as an undercover police car. Some tiny little LED lights were obscured in the grille, and I saw that it had no tint on any of its windows, which also threw me off. I never would have guessed that a cop would be in a Subaru Ascent; thankfully my registration was up to date and I wasn’t doing anything illegal.
I’ve seen more and more unexpected vehicles being used by cops and other government agencies, and it stresses me out knowing I can’t guess if a police officer is following me or if it’s just a regular tailgater. What’s your experience? We want to know what vehicle you’ve seen used by a cop that was the most unexpected or surprising. Sound off in the comments and let us know what cars we should be looking out for in traffic.