GM-Holden chases US cop car order

GM-Holden chairman and managing director Alan Batey admits 2010 has been a shocker. "But Holden dealers are all saying let's get into 2010 and not look in the rear view mirror too much."

GM will pay the next part of its loan off early, and though Holden exports alone dropped from 70,000 in 2008 to under 10,000 this year, it's working on reversing that trend.

With its US police cars? Perhaps - though Batey's not counting his chickens. "We showed them a long wheelbase Caprice concept. We're now doing a lot of legwork asking US police forces exactly what they need," he says.

Announcing the concept paved the way for that research - "It was the chicken and the egg, we had to announce it to get the feedback we need to build the car" - but it's not a done deal. For a start, the Ford-supplied Crown Victoria police cars have a column shift, and bench seat. There's a lot of equipment packed into that centre space, and a floor shift and centrally mounted window switches aren't ideal. "How much do we want to invest to make our car meet requirements?" Batey says.

The Caprice does have its advantages. The Crown Victoria's frontal airbag can't properly deploy without hitting the central computer stack. The Caprice is designed for two front seats - there's no central airbag to factor in.

There's plenty of rear space, too. "They have one policeman in a car with the rear seats caged; the Caprice has more rear legroom to fit the barrier back there."

Holden designed side airbags for its ute - which will work in a Caprice with a barrier where a conventional car's airbags won't. "The police understand all this but they struggle to get capital and they want to transfer equipment, so it's a trade-off."

A trade-off that's all the harder because requirements vary from force to force, from how many guns you carry to whether a laptop needs power. But most problems can be solved. "The US police always wear a gun, and handcuffs. You can imagine how uncomfortable that is in the car. So one of our seat designers sculpted a seat out to suit, and the policeman who tested it couldn't believe how comfy it was."

However, it's not only the cabin that Holden must work on. "When TV shows depict US police clipping a car at speed to make it spin - they're really taught to do that. At 100km/h! And it's not that simple, there are airbag sensors, and all those things still have to work ..."

Batey says by the end of February Holden will know if the business case stacks up. If it does, and Holden beats current supplier Ford to the order, there's the potential to sell it elsewhere - and he will have reversed the export downturn with just one annual order.