When I saw this picture, I knew I had to do a special feature page on it. This is Tom Rawlinson's 1995 Chevrolet Caprice 9C1 LT1, a classic Indiana sheriff "brown and tan". This is retired Hendricks County Sheriff's Department car #9503. Tom purchased it from a dealer who purchased it from the county several years ago. The dealer never titled it however, so the title still said the vehicle was the property of the Hendricks County Commissioners on it. Tom plans to leave the car as stock as possible. I have yet to see the car up close and personal, but he says it is "cherry", and from the pictures he sent me, I believe it!
Not too long ago, before the mass influx of multitudes of Wimpalas and Crown Vics, hundreds of cars just like this one patrolled thousands of miles of state highways and rural county back roads, all across the state of Indiana. While the brown and tan paint scheme is not officially sanctioned by any state statute, it has been adopted by the Indiana Sheriffs' Association as the standard paint scheme for marked county sheriff department cars in Indiana. While not all counties adhere to this standard, the vast majority do, and it makes it very easy to identify a county sheriff car anywhere you go in Indiana. Ohio is similar; all of their county cars are solid black with the same style decals.
I think a lot of people have forgotten what one of these looks (and performs) like. This car is a great example. This Chevrolet will run the pants (and the 3.8 liter) right off of today's brown and tan "Chevrolets", and its ten years old. This is a throwback to when Chevy used to build real police cars, and this is what the real Chevy police cars looked like that patrolled my neighborhood back in the day.
Thanks to Tom Rawlinson for letting me do a feature on his car, and write another rant about GM and their Wimpalas, using his car as ammunition!
"The best never die. They just retire. And sometimes, if they get bored, they find something else to do."
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