Glynn County Police Chief Matt Doering is pleased with a set of prototype patrol vehicles his department tested last week on East Beach on St. Simons Island.
"The evaluations are good. I wanted to see how these prototype cars would perform, compared to our current vehicles, and they did well," he said.
The department tested two prototype cars developed by Ford Motor Co. to see how they would handle on loose terrain, such as sand.
"We respond to emergency calls out on the beach. I wanted to know how these all-wheel-drive vehicles worked," Doering said. "It's important to know how these vehicles would handle on the sand, compared to our current units."
Doering also said the cars would perform well on many of the unpaved gravel and dirt roads that still stretch across rural parts of the county.
In the past, police would buy stock cars from automakers that had been modified for patrol, but Ford has developed a line of vehicles for police, Doering said.
The automaker invited Doering and some of his command staff to test a sedan prototype and an SUV prototype on a track in Atlanta last month, but Doering wanted to see how the vehicles would respond on the county's home turf.
After testing both vehicles on East Beach, Doering took the cars to the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center to test them in high-speed pursuit training on its special driving course.
So far, both cars have performed "better than expected," Doering said.
Doering will buy replacement patrol cars later this year. ___
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