Forget ‘whoop whoop’. The sound of the police is definitely more ‘vroom vroom’ now UK cops have got their hands on an Ariel Atom 3.5R police car.
That’s right; the po-po over at Avon and Somerset constabulary – Ariel’s local police force – have just shown off the latest addition to their fleet – the crazy-as-bat-poop Ariel Atom 3.5R. This, for those of you who are unaware, is likely to be the fastest police motor on four wheels thanks to a ridiculously low curb weight of 612kg mated to an engine that produces 350hp.
Performance? Well that word’s a bit of an understatement, but it’ll do 0-60mph in a criminal-confounding 2.5 seconds – that’s faster than pretty much anything outside of… well, we can’t think of anything faster from a standstill – it’s that quick.
Of course, the cops have said they won’t be blasting around like hooligans in the police Atom (when people are watching, obviously) and that the car will be used to promote the Safer Rider campaign, which is designed to increase awareness of motorcyclist safety. Yeah, it appears they’ve miscounted the number of wheels on the Atom, but hey – it doesn’t have a roof, so they’ve got one thing right.
Sergeant Andy Parsons, top dog of the Safer Rider campaign, says: “Motorcyclists make up just 1 per cent of total road traffic but account for nearly 20 per cent of all road user deaths. They are roughly 35 times more likely to be killed in a road traffic collision than someone in a car and we really want to see these numbers reduced.”
Right you are, buddy. Now give us the damn keys.
Now you’ve seen this, have a look at some of the worst police cars we’ve ever come across.
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