Your story, your photographs, your paperwork
Help preserve the history of the American police car
Did you drive one, keep one running, equip one for patrol, or choose the cars a whole department would drive? If you own a retired patrol car today, its story belongs here too. What you remember, and what is still in your drawer, belongs in this history.
Why your story matters
The test books tell me how fast a police car went and how hard it stopped. They do not tell me what it was like to start a night shift in one, to keep it running through a hard winter, or to decide which car a department would drive for years. Only the people who did that work know.
Most patrol cars were worked hard, then sold, rebuilt or scrapped. Photographs fade in shoeboxes, and old paperwork gets thrown away. A memory that is written down, checked and published can be found by anyone who comes looking.
One drawer can change the record. A retired officer who still had Ford’s 1982 Mustang SSP advertisement showed that the car’s famous 6.3-second figure was zero to fifty, not the zero to sixty that is still repeated almost everywhere. The corrections page shows what changed.
Officers who drove these cars have already sent photographs and first-hand accounts to Badges & Chrome. You can read one of those accounts on the Conversations page.
If you worked with the SSP in any way, on patrol, in the shop or in the fleet office, I would love to hear what it was really like.
What I am looking for
- Your memories of police cars you drove, maintained, equipped or bought: what they were good at, what they were not, and what the job asked of them.
- Photographs of patrol cars in service, or of surviving cars today, with the build sheet or data plate if you have it.
- Documents: Michigan State Police test books and bulletins, manufacturers’ police brochures and advertisements, and department orders or specifications.
There is no need for polished writing or a complete story. Write it the way you would tell it. A few lines, or one photograph with a date and a place, is enough to start.
How your contribution is used
- Nothing is published until you have seen it and agreed. You see exactly how it will appear on the site or in a video before it goes live.
- Your words stay yours. On the site, your account is published in your own words and in your own order. I correct typos and may add headings, but I do not move, shorten or rewrite anything without your agreement. A quotation in an article or a video uses only the lines you agree to.
- Your memory and the paperwork work together. Where a document confirms a figure or a date you mention, I say so. Where no document covers it, your words stand as your recollection, credited to you. If a document says something different, I will tell you before anything is published, and we decide together how to show it.
- You choose the credit: your full name, your initials, or no name at all. Your account is published as your own, not as a statement from any agency.
- I check documents like everything else. When a document changes something already on the site, the change is listed on the corrections page.
Before you send
- Please send only photographs you took, or that you have the photographer’s permission to share.
- If a photograph shows other people, please tell me whether they are OK with being shown.
- Photos as JPG or PNG and documents as PDF, up to three files at a time, 5 MB each. If you have more, send the first few and I will reply with a way to send the rest. If a photo is too large, send it at a smaller size, or send your account first.
Your details
Your name, your email address and what you send come to me by email; the form keeps no copy on the website. I use your email address only to reply to you about what you sent, and it is never published.
I keep our emails while I work on your contribution and, if it is published, for as long as it stays online, as the record of what you agreed to. You can ask me at any time, by replying to my email or by writing to contact@badgesandchrome.com, to remove your contribution from the site and from future videos, or to delete your details. Videos already published stay as they are, but I will remove your name from their descriptions.
Add your story to the record
Start with a few lines. I will reply by email, and we can take it from there. Thank you for helping keep this history alive.