Volkswagen Santana And Passat Police Cars In China

A Volkswagen Santana 2000 police car, seen at a police show in 2011. I always loved to go to police equipment shows in China to check out new police cars. I went there just for fun, but there were also real coppers shopping for new wheels. Naturally, they arrived  with their own police cars, like this Volkswagen Santana 2000.

The Santana 2000 was one of many Santana variants manufactured by the SAIC-Volkswagen joint venture in Shanghai. It was a very common police car in the Shanghai area but in Beijing it was more rare in police service.

The car on the photo seems pretty much a standard cop car, with a basic light bar and siren and painted in typical police colors. The Santana’s were often used to ferry higher-ranking officers around, hence the darkened windows.

Government cars in China have white license plates. The character on the left is 京, jing, short for 北京, or Beijing. The character on the right is another jing, 警, short for  警察, jingcha, or police. The word 警察 is also visible on the bonnet. The characters on the side are 公安, gong ‘an, and that means public security. Earlier, government services also used the term wujing (武警), a collective abbreviation police and armed forces.

This is a very cool SAIC-Volkswagen Santana police car. It has a very special roof bar with police lights, a camera with speakers on the side, and two flood lights. This kind of police car was often used to accompany motorcades in Beijing. Some drove in the actual convoy while others were used to block side roads and ramps. I found these vehicles pretty impressive, and they always had the powerful 2.8 liter V6 under the bonnet.

I will build another article with the police cars on the actual exhibition!