The Turbo Impreza is a joyriders favourite, due to it's powerful turbocharged flat four engine and 4 wheel drive. In a nutshell it goes like stink and the police forces in the UK found them to be extremely hard to catch. Following the "If you can't beat them, join them" line of thinking, a number of police forces in the UK obtained their own Impreza Turbos for patrol work, principally to catch speeders and joyriders.
These "police Imprezas" are not showroom standard cars like the ones for sale in an ordinary Subaru dealer, but instead are modified by Prodrive, the same British tuning outfit who prepare rally spec Imprezas, including the Impreza WRCs (World Rally Cars). Consequently these cars have engines in a higher state of tune for more performance and have strengthened suspensions and an engine sump guard (as on the rally spec Imprezas) to allow the police to drive across speed bumps at high speed without destroying the car.
In addition to the high performance modifications, these Imprezas have the usual police attachments such as the blue light bar on the roof, police decals (including one in reverse print on the bonnet so it can be read in some unfortunate speeders rear view mirror!) and a camera attachment on the rear view mirror to video offending motorists. Both the driver and passenger also benefit from a set of Recaro bucket seats.
This particular model represents an Impreza in service with the Humberside Police force in the UK. From the registration plate I would say it shows a car from 1997-98 (an "R plate").
AUTOart make this superb model and it is one of many great Subaru Impreza models released by them. It has a detailed engine, a great interior, an accurate body with realistic police attachments and decals and best of all has excellent alloy wheels with brilliant brake discs and calipers. The discs themselves have real metal facings as opposed to being painted silver, and they look all the better for it. This model gets 8/10 marks from me.
