The Last Surviving Japanese Porsche 912 Police Car (kottke.org)

I'm no car guy, but that's a beautiful vehicle. How totally Japanese too; zany but rad.

Scrapping them should be a crime

People are doing really ugly, corrupted, and cruel things to own and to drive Porsche. Don't understand sentiment to this brand, especially considering a hole in their history during 1930s-1940s. It's a drving scrap, they didn't scrap it, big deal.

Steering wheel on the wrong side!

Bit of a shame what has happened to classic Porsche prices. They used to be “car guy” cars. Now the prices went wackadoodle they’ve become cars for people who…aren’t car guys and can’t even pronounce it properly.

Interesting history on that one, bit of an odd choice for the Japanese police.

The police of Amsterdam also used to have Porsche police cars

https://www.hagerty.com/media/automotive-history/for-more-th...

Any other police departments that did this or just those two?

Really dig that side mounted siren. Peak mid century aesthetics.

whats the huge sports chrono looking thing on the dash? wonder if thats the origin of the modern option

not Porsche but the italian police has 2 Lamborghini Huracan. They make some good use of them sometimes: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/dec/20/italian-police...

> In the 1960s, four Porsche 912s were customized for use as police cars in Japan

Fascinating. So many follow-on questions. Why four exactly? Were they all in Tokyo, or spread around? Did they get used for anything other than highway patrol? Who got to drive them?

Not as beautiful, but the French Gendarmerie National have 22 Alpine A110. Some pictures there : https://www.largus.fr/actualite-automobile/alpine-a110-genda....

In 4 four years, they managed to total 4 of them (from the 26 brought in 2021).

These photos were originally by Lorenzo Kikisch for Type 7 magazine

https://www.instagram.com/p/DZYbpfliUfs/

I really need James May to explain its entire service history to me.