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8 things you learn while driving a cop car [w/videos]

Let me start off with the obvious: it is absolutely illegal to impersonate a police officer. And now that that's out of the way, I'd just like to say that driving a cop car is really, really cool. Here's the background to this story: Dodge unveiled its redesigned 2015 Charger Pursuit police cruiser, and kindly allowed Autoblog to test it. That meant fellow senior editor Seyth Miersma and I would spend a week with the cop car, and the goal here was to see just how different the behind-the-wheel experience is, from a civilian's point of view. After all, it's not technically a police car – it isn't affiliated with any city, it doesn't say "police" anywhere on it, and it's been fitted with buzzkill-worthy "NOT IN SERVICE" magnets (easily removed for photos, of course). But that meant nothing. As Seyth and I found out after our week of testing, most people can't tell the difference, and the Charger Pursuit commands all the same reactions as any normal cop car would on the road. Here are a few things we noticed during our time as wannabe cops. 1. You Drive In A Bubble On The Highway Forget for a moment that our cruiser was liveried with Dodge markings instead of those of the highway patrol. Ignore the large "NOT IN SERVICE" signs adhered around the car. Something in the lizard brain of just about every licensed driver tells them to hold back when they see any hint of a cop car, or just the silhouette of a light bar on a marked sedan. Hence, when driving on the highway, and especially when one already has some distance from cars forward and aft, a sort of bubble of fear starts to open up around you. Cars just ahead seem very reluctant to pass one another or change lanes much, while those behind wait to move up on you until there's a full herd movement to do so. The effect isn't perfect – which is probably ascribable to the aforementioned giveaways that I'm not really a cop – but it did occur on several occasions during commutes from the office. 2. You Drive In A Pack In The City My commute home from the Autoblog office normally takes anywhere from 25 to 30 minutes, and it's a straight shot down Woodward Avenue from Detroit's north suburbs into the city, where I live. Traffic usually moves at a steady pace, the Michigan-spec "five-over" speed.

Experience the Woodward Dream Cruise in a Dodge Challenger Hellcat

While Autoblog was consumed by coverage of the increasingly important Monterey Car Week last weekend, there was another big even going on. The Woodward Dream Cruise is significantly lighter in terms of news, but there's no denying that it's a far bigger, and far more egalitarian than what the wine-and-cheese crowd experience on the links at Pebble Beach. The Dream Cruise crams tens of thousands of cars and over a million spectators along a four-lane ribbon of asphalt between Ferndale and Pontiac, MI. What's remarkable aren't these numbers, though, so much as the distances they travel. Owners and admirers come from far and wide, across the United States and in some cases across the globe, to take in the spectacle. This year, local radio and television coverage featured fans that traveled from Japan, Australia, and Europe, just to take in the cruise. Of course, we realize that not everyone can make the pilgrimage to Woodward Avenue. With that fact in mind, we decided to bring a bit of the Dream Cruise to Autoblog with a time-lapse video of the cruise route. You can experience the good (a Lamborghini Gallardo, Chevrolet Chevelle, and Oldsmobile Cutlass 442), the bad (the traffic jams), and the ugly (no, your 2003 Ford Focus does not qualify as a classic, get the hell out of the cruiser lanes). So join us, as we turn off 8 Mile Road behind the wheel of our 2015 Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat and run north, through Ferndale, Pleasant Ridge, Royal Oak, Huntington Woods, Berkley, Bloomfield Township, and Bloomfield Hills, before ending up on Wide Track Drive in Pontiac.

Detroit 3 small cars lay an egg in latest Consumer Reports reliability study

Consumer Reports has released its Annual Auto Reliability Survey and the results are, in a word, interesting. While we already covered the score-damaging effects of infotainment systems, there's another big angle to the data that's getting some attention - the utterly dismal scores of the Detroit Three's small car offerings.
The turbocharged Dodge Dart and Chevrolet Cruze, as well as the Ford Fiesta were their respective brands' lowest-scoring models, a stat that's made worse by the fact that the American automakers finished 25th, 21st and 23rd, respectively.
That's not acceptable for The Detroit Free Press' auto critic, Mark Phelan, who has penned a scathing critique of the D3's small car reliability scores, arguing that GM, Ford and Chrysler are "out of excuses."