The Cannonball Run. I remember going to see the movie in the theater in 1981 with my best friend Joe. The movie was based on a real outlaw cross country race held (4) times from 1971 to 1979. As a cadet in the Ohio State Highway Patrol Academy in 1990, I found a procedure that guided Troopers on what to do if they encountered any of these racers.
As a State Trooper, it’s a game of cat and mouse. The car enthusiast that wants to drive fast, and the car enthusiast with a pursuit vehicle trying to catch them. The really good drivers know how to not get caught and do it safely. The bad drivers get stopped and possibly removed from the road.
My desire to control pursuit vehicles at high speed lead me to become a certified police driving instructor. My career also required me to have to chase fleeing vehicles, and be a better driver than the one I was chasing.
The idea of speeding across the United States to beat a Cannonball Run record, and my experience patrolling the interstate has caused me to daydream about what kind of car I’d drive if I was attempting the Cannonball Run record. It’s something filed away in my brain that I won’t share online.
Given that, when I saw that Arne Toman and Doug Tabbutt set a new record of 25 hours and 39 minutes in an Audi made to look like a police car, it got my attention. To set that record they averaged 110 MPH driving from New York to California with a max speed of 175 MPH.
The 2016 Audi A6 has a similar style to the Ford Taurus, and vinyl was used to disguise the Audi to make the lights and grill resemble that of an unmarked police Taurus, as well as a fake Ford logo that says ‘Audi’. The car was given the nickname the Fraud Taurus. The car received an additional 45 gallon fuel cell in the trunk, CB radio, GPS, power inverter, brake light kill switch, and other electronic counter measures. Even the wheels were painted to resemble black ‘steelie’ cop car wheels.
While I know that this isn’t a real police car, I’ve found that people that like cool police cars are typically car enthusiasts, and I’ve known many State Troopers to have fast and sporty cars for their personal vehicles. So I figured I’d share this.
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