I have been driving Chevrolet full-size rear-wheel drive automobiles for the last thirty years. I used to have a 87' ex-Ohio state police car, the same but an 89' and I still have a 1990 Caprice cop car, though I am not driving it. I currently drive one of the early nineties Caprices with the smoother body lines.
Twenty years ago I used to drive that 87' like a cop. I drove it from Lake Erie down to Atlanta, Georgia in eleven hours once, averaging over eighty mph including stopping for a flat, a pee and one fast meal.
I used to get it on the interstate and cruise at the "ton", everyone that saw me in their mirror would get out of the way. I ran through a red light at a major city intersection at high speed floored in front of a cop and he didn't do a damn thing, figured I was a state boy on a mission perhaps?
Great car but it did not last too long. A drunk backed into it when it was parked, then on the way to work one day I lost it on an icy road and went down a bank and sort of bent it in half a bit.
I used to drive it to work over I-90 every day as fast as it would go. The Cop cars and the IrocZ and Vette in the eighties had a transmission that would go overdrive and lock up the converter at 90mph, then you were set to see what it could do.
It soldiered on until I was driving drunk one night between keg parties, took a shortcut through a church parking lot and ripped the oil filter off the bottom of the motor driving over a concrete curb. It still ran for several miles before all the oil spurted out and the engine seized. I pushed it a mile to a parking lot to get it off the highway and hidden from the cops.
The boxy Caprice cop cars were great machines, but the aerodynamics were terrible. At high speed the hood and roof would vibrate like bass-drum heads. The 91'-96' Caprice is much better at over 100mph, and much faster because of it's great aerodynamics. I was driving on the interstate in a 93' Caprice and an older Crown Vic that did not have quite the aerodynamics tried to run me, I did not even have to floor it, the Caprice just slipped and glided up somewhere over 100mph faster and faster and made the Vic a spec in the mirror. Fabulous machines if you can get your hands on one, and the handling with the cop sway bars and springs let it leave a lot of "sports" shitbox cars behind in the turns easily.
The last Caprice story I have is about a 79' Caprice I had twenty five years ago that was all stock appearing, but I dropped a 400cid smallblock into it with a Holley intake and four-barrel. I dragged three Mustang GT's with it and ran right with them all, and the car would go faster and faster on the top end as long as you had the nerve to hold the gas floored. My brother and I had it on I-90 with the speedo needle disappearing behind metal then reappearing straight down in the gear selector. Not that we should have had our eyes on the dash at that speed. I blew off all the eighties shit-box sports, turbo and so-called muscle cars with it, it was a blast. The car is long gone but I still have the engine out of it in a corner, I am someday hoping to throw it into another Caprice and relive a bit of my youth.....
