{"id":79037,"date":"2024-05-31T08:46:00","date_gmt":"2024-05-31T12:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.dodgegarage.com\/news-api\/?p=79037"},"modified":"2024-05-28T14:47:24","modified_gmt":"2024-05-28T18:47:24","slug":"440-cubic-inches-ready-to-serve-protect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/gallery\/2024\/05\/440-cubic-inches-ready-to-serve-protect.html","title":{"rendered":"440 Cubic Inches Ready to Serve & Protect"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

We’ve always been intrigued by police cars, especially if you’re a gearhead. It is Dan Akroyd’s ‘Elwood’ character declaring “It’s got a copy motor, a 440-cubic-inch plant, it’s got cop tires, cop suspensions, cop shocks. It’s\u00a0a model made before catalytic converters, so\u00a0it’ll\u00a0run good on regular gas,\u201d\u00a0that have become movie trivia.\u00a0It was\u00a0those three sentences from the 1980 hit movie\u00a0The Blues Brothers<\/em>\u00a0that\u00a0have\u00a0been embedded\u00a0into every car\u00a0enthusiast\u2019s\u00a0memory banks.\u00a0With the visuals of an ex-Mount Prospect 1974 Dodge Monaco police car flying over bridges like Evel Knievel, charging through a shopping mall like an angry bull in a China store, and partaking in one of cinema\u00a0history\u2019s\u00a0most epic car chases and crash scenes with untold carnage, this film made an indelible impression to millions. Brothers Jake and Elwood, along with their tattered Dodge Monaco, have been a part of American Pop Culture for decades\u00a0and\u00a0the duo with their trusty ride are recognized\u00a0all over the world.\u00a0It\u2019s\u00a0no wonder that finding a running ex-police car in decent shape from the 1960s or 1970s is harder than unearthing a 1969 Charger Daytona or 1970 Challenger R\/T with a 426 HEMI\u00ae<\/sup> engine.\u00a0Police cars were ridden\u00a0hard and put away wet by the departments that abused them chasing down the bad guys. When\u00a0their shift was over for good, ex-police cars headed off to get sold at auctions for civilian life\u00a0which\u00a0were usually taxi fleets or private individuals with abusive driving habits. But how a very nice 1977 Michigan State Police Plymouth Fury powered by a 440 is a tale that\u00a0must be told.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n

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It begins with Ross Urtel and his business partner in crime (pun intended!), Eric Laesch, who owns Chase Classic Motors<\/a> in Clinton Township, Michigan. The two share a passion and appreciation for retired police cruisers. The 43-year-old Urtel from Grosse Pointe Woods, Michigan, Michigan, fell in love with police cars at a very young age when he was watching the movie The Blues Brothers<\/em> at his cousin\u2019s house and was mystified at the 1974 Dodge Monaco ex-police car leaping over bridges and doing other supernatural things. \u201cI remember watching that black and white Monaco jumping 95th Street drawbridge over the Lake Calumet canal. That scene is indelibly ingrained in my mind and ever since I\u2019ve had a love of Mopar\u00ae<\/sub> police cars,\u201d said Ross. \u201cAs a kid of the 1980s, I watched a lot of television and there were many reruns in the afternoon that featured police chases with numerous Dodge and Plymouth police cars. This just stuck with me throughout my teenage years and influenced me to pursue a career in law enforcement. Eventually, I left law enforcement, joined the Navy, and now work for the VA (Veteran’s Administration) but my love of police cars never went away!”<\/p>\n\n\n

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For\u00a0Eric,\u00a0he has the same passion for these machines that led a hard life and whose sole duty was to help law enforcement do their job.\u00a0He\u2019s\u00a0also 43 and\u00a0currently\u00a0works as an electrician but\u00a0this former automotive instructor has found his calling working on cars he admired as a youth glued to the movie screen or TV set.\u00a0\u201cAs a kid, I also loved car chase movies. They were so cool, especially seeing all the Mopar police cars\u00a0that\u00a0were\u00a0used\u00a0in many shows and films. Now, I get to work on these machines and give them a new lease on life\u00a0it\u2019s\u00a0awesome.\u00a0It\u2019s\u00a0sort of like meeting my childhood heroes!\u201d\u00a0Eric also owns a 1984 ex-Michigan State Police Gran Fury that he takes to many parades, car shows and events.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n

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How Ross ended up with the 1977 big-block Michigan State Police Plymouth Fury is an interesting tale.\u00a0He had been searching for a mid to late 1970s Dodge of Plymouth B-body police car for most of his life\u00a0and\u00a0being a collector of police cars, he had to have one. Ross knew of this 1977 MSP Fury five years ago, but it\u00a0got away from\u00a0him.\u00a0\u201cI had assumed\u00a0all the big-block Mopar Michigan State police cars were destroyed,\u00a0but\u00a0I knew of this one. Like many other deals, this one just never happened. Then later on, I had heard of it coming up for sale around 2019 or 2020\u00a0and\u00a0it\u00a0was located\u00a0in a barn up in Mackinaw, Michigan, and\u00a0it\u00a0was\u00a0published\u00a0on Facebook,\u201d\u00a0noted Ross.\u00a0\u201cI did more research and found\u00a0the car had been sold\u00a0back\u00a0in 1999 or 2000 to a cab company owner in Cleveland. He partially refreshed it\u00a0then\u00a0sold it to a pilot from Maryland who happened to have a summer house in Mackinaw.\u00a0His\u00a0neighbor, a\u00a0young enthusiast,\u00a0knew about the car\u00a0and\u00a0the pilot sold it to him.\u00a0But owning any old car can be a daunting task\u00a0and\u00a0once again, the Fury\u00a0was sold\u00a0to a man in Boston, and we missed out. After a while, he called me to see if\u00a0I\u2019d\u00a0like to purchase the Fury as it was too much for him\u00a0and\u00a0we jumped at the chance.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n

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The Fury was built at\u00a0Chrysler\u2019s\u00a0Detroit Lynch Road plant in April\u00a0of\u00a01977 and assigned to the Grand Haven, Michigan, Post. Despite being saddled with increased emission equipment thrown at the automakers in the late 1970s, the\u00a0Fury\u2019s\u00a0\u2018E86\u2019\u00a0code High-Performance 440-cubic-inch V8 powerplant still managed to hustle up past 120 mph in a hurry and maintain those speeds for long durations. Those old enough will still recall the unmistakable sound of the\u00a0engine\u2019s\u00a0Carter Thermoquad carburetor\u2019s secondaries being flung open in anger when\u00a0there was\u00a0an emergency\u00a0call,\u00a0or when a speeder had to\u00a0be reeled in. Chrysler\u00a0didn\u2019t\u00a0mess around with their Police Pursuit Packages and went all in.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n

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Along with the 440 engine, heavy-duty cooling was included along with special suspension that had bigger front and rear sway bars and heavy-duty springs were added. The unique 15X6.5-inch vented steel wheels and traditional \u2018Dog Dish\u2019 hubcaps complete the Fury\u2019s no-nonsense exterior appearance. Chrysler\u2019s Police Pursuit Package also included heavy-duty brakes and an automatic high-pressure cut-off switch to protect the air conditioning during long periods of idle an automatic high-speed cut-off switch would disengage the compressor at high speeds to reduce engine load and prevent over-speeding of the compressor. There were also oil coolers for both the transmission and power steering to keep their vital fluids at a happy temp when the going got tough. On the inside, the Fury Police Pursuit received a calibrated 140 MPH speedometer along with heavy-duty cloth\/vinyl seat covers for those long hours. <\/p>\n\n\n

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These days, the ex-Michigan State Police 1977 Plymouth Fury is no longer on call chasing down bad guys and law-breaking motorists.\u00a0It\u2019s\u00a0in the care of Ross and\u00a0Eric\u00a0and\u00a0their duties are preserving and maintaining this rare example of a 440-powered Plymouth Fury Police Pursuit. When we asked Ross about all the Mopar police car carnage in The Blues Brothers<\/em> movie and that iconic scene in which all the police cars are piling up near Lake and LaSalle Street on Lower Wacker Drive, he had this insightful response.\u00a0\u201cIt was painful but fun to watch the demise of those cars on the screen\u00a0but\u00a0remember, in Hollywood, all those ex-Mopar police cars died for our entertainment.\u00a0It\u2019s\u00a0also a shame more of them don\u2019t survive but remember, police cars\u00a0we\u00a0designed to be driven daily, driven hard in all sorts of environments, beaten almost to the point of death, while being used for the public safety of the community. Police cars\u00a0were never intended\u00a0to live a long life. They were soldiers who had lived fast and died young. But\u00a0their legacy will forever be preserved\u00a0on film!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here are a few more shots of this unique and scarce 1977 Plymouth Fury Police Pursuit that protected and served the community for many years. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We’ve always been intrigued by police cars, especially if you’re a gearhead. It is Dan Akroyd’s ‘Elwood’ character declaring “It’s got a copy motor, a 440-cubic-inch plant, it’s got cop tires, cop suspensions, cop shocks. It’s\u00a0a model made before catalytic converters, so\u00a0it’ll\u00a0run good on regular gas,\u201d\u00a0that have become movie trivia.\u00a0It was\u00a0those three sentences from the 1980 hit movie\u00a0The Blues Brothers\u00a0that\u00a0have\u00a0been embedded\u00a0into every car\u00a0enthusiast\u2019s\u00a0memory banks.\u00a0With the visuals of an ex-Mount Prospect 1974 Dodge Monaco police car flying over bridges like Evel Knievel, charging through a shopping mall like an angry bull […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":79039,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2621,2624],"tags":[547,2949],"class_list":["post-79037","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gallery","category-owners-clubs","tag-mopar","tag-plymouth-classics"],"acf":[],"custom_fields":{"post_thumbnail_image":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/440CubicInchesPolice_Feature.jpg","social_image":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/440CubicInchesPolice_Social-1.jpg","icon_selection":"article","external_link":"","featured_article":[],"upload_background_image":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79037"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/29"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79037"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79037\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79072,"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79037\/revisions\/79072"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79039"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}