I started out as a cadet back in 1973 for a small town police department. I became a reserve officer in 1977 and a fulltime officer in 1978. As I recall the cars we had back then were either Doge Polara's and Plymouth Fury's. We had the old LAPD style (Adam 12) light set up with a single rotating light in the center and a solid red "Can" light on each side. Both these model cars had at least the 383 V-8's in them and I remember one version along the line as having a 454 V-8. They were definately "screamers", but the power was kind of lost on us as the town was so small, that by the time you had one of these babies up to 55mph you were in another jurisdiction! My favorite patrol car was the 1978-80 Chevy Nova. These were the cars they were using when I tranferred to the Sheriff's Office in 1980. They had the 350 V-8's in them and were very fast and manuverable. The bigger Deputies did not like them as they were a bit on the smallside, but for my size (6'), they were perfect! We were the first in the County to use the new "Light Bar" technology (The Twinsonic), which I thought was way cool. The line troopers had the solid red light bar while the supervisors had the half red and half blue set ups. These were great for "Lighting up the bad guys", but probably cost us bit in gas and speed as it was like installing a large flat board on the roof of your car, which would act like a wind brake!