No, Michigan’s Plymouth Fury Police Cars Aren’t Extinct
It was the late ‘70s, and I was driving from Detroit to Chicago in my time-worn but entertaining ’58 Mercedes 220S. I had just finished a photoshoot for Chrysler’s celebration of the Hemi engine. Hoping to get home in time to drop my film off at the lab, I was pushing the car a bit. Well, maybe more than a bit. I think that on a downhill section of I-94 I had urged the old Benz to a speed in excess of 80 mph—about 25 over the cursed national speed limit of the era. I was feeling good, high on the success of the day, knowing I had some good shots for my pal, the late editor of Hi-Performance CARS, Steve Collison.
Suddenly, there it was, filling my rearview mirror with a roar: A big, blue Michigan State Police cruiser with red roof light rotating and headlights flashing. Breaking into a sweat, I pulled to the side, rolled down the window, and prepared for the worst. Fortunately, the seemingly dire situation didn’t turn out as bad as it might have. I got off with a ticket for 65 in a 55 and a stern warning that next time it would be much, much worse.
I don’t really have a soft spot for police cars, but Ross Urtel and his partner Eric Laesch do. They’re the owners of a company called Chase Classic Motors, and they specialize in the restoration of public-service emergency vehicles and other unusual collectible cars. I met Urtel at a car show, when he arrived behind the wheel of the car of my nightmares: a 1977 Plymouth Fury police car, a dead ringer for the one that had given me heart palpitations almost half a century ago, commonly known as a “Michigan Fury.”
Urtel’s Plymouth pursuit vehicle is powered by the E86 440-cubic-inch V-8, a special option for police vehicles. Unlike the 440 found in most ’77 Mopars, that powerplant is equipped with a high-performance cam and dual exhausts, so it churns out 245 horsepower and 355 lb-ft of torque. Those may not seem like big numbers today, but in the days when engines were strangled by emissions control, they were. According to Urtel, the Michigan Fury was faster and quicker than any domestic car sold in the U.S. at the time. His was driven by a Michigan State Trooper named Victor Windstorm, who used it to patrol state roads looking for miscreants like me. Urtel thinks that the car pictured here is the sole survivor of a small fleet of pursuit vehicles that Michigan owned at the time. And while the venerable cop car is pushing 50 years old, it’s still moderately quick. It’s even pretty, in a twisted kind of way.
Like many other collectors of emergency vehicles, Urtel and Laesch once thought that the Michigan pursuit vehicles of the ‘70s were an extinct species. They assumed that all of the cars had been either seriously molested or junked. Then, just a few years ago Urtel learned that a reasonably complete Michigan Fury might still exist. Holden Cooper, a firefighter in Mackinaw City, Michigan, posted on a social media site that he had seen just such a car in a barn in that town way Up North. He said the owner lived out of state. The car had probably been in storage for about 20 years, he guessed.
At some point, the car went up for sale on Facebook Marketplace. Urtel tried to get up to Mackinaw City to see it. He planned to lay some money down and drive the car home to his business in Clinton Township, Michigan. He was too late. The car went to Dan Passucci, a Massachusetts fleet supervisor who shares Urtel’s interest in police cars. Passucci did some refurbishment work, adding to what had been done by another owner in the ‘90s. Eventually, he decided to sell the car and reached out to Classic Motors, Urtel’s business. This time, Urtel didn’t hesitate. Soon, the Michigan Fury was back in its home state.
Attached to the car was a speedometer calibration form that dated back to the car’s days in service. The form was signed by a retired state trooper named Victor Windstorm. A post on a web page for retired troopers located the officer, who recalled the car but has thus far not returned queries from Urtel and Laesch. They remain hopeful.
Meanwhile, the restoration of the big, blue Michigan Fury continues. Urtel and Laesch are looking for a front bench seat from a police car to replace the cushy one that was installed in the ‘90s by the owner of a cab company. (The seat he put in is a lot more luxurious than the standard-issue bench typical of police cars and other fleet vehicles.) That owner used the Fury as his personal car and as an ersatz tow truck that could retrieve broken cabs and drag them back to his barn. Urtel and Laesch also want to upgrade the cooling system, rear suspension, and a few other things on the car. But for now, the Michigan Fury looks good and runs well, so it’s making the rounds at shows for public service vehicles, proving that old cop cars can still strike fear into the hearts of ne’er-do-wells.
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In the late 60’s and early 70’s my father would take me to the Michigan State Vehicle Auction and the Lansing City Auto Auction (the cars of course were all Oldsmobiles at the time) …..the 69 to 71 Fury 1’s were the majority of the State patrol cars with 440 engines in them….if you purchased one you had to sign that you would change the color before licensing it in Michigan…the most interesting car he bought at the State Auction was a 1970 AMC Ambassador 4 door with a 390 Go Package, 15″ wheels and 3 pull switches under the dash…one turned off the front parking lights, one turned off one of the headlights and the other turned off all lights other than the headlights….the car had been an undercover detective vehicle.
The municipality where I worked retired its last Fury shortly before I started but the stories remained…the cars were purchased as a piggy-back on the state bid, so they were equipped for highway patrol, including the 440. They were not well suited to largely urban patrol. The cooling systems were hard-pressed to cope with low patrol speeds. The valve stem seals cooked, and so they burned oil at the rate of about a quart a shift. It didn’t help that our service garage used recycled oil(!) and figured oil was cheaper than repair.
The Fury squads were replaced with LTD IIs with the 302 motor. They were much slower than the Plymouths, obviously, even slower than the 318 motor Diplomat squads that ruled the 80s.
Never drove a Fury but wish I had.
Drove a 74 plymouth fury 440 to our police academy every day for seven weeks (1975).
Picked up 5 other recruits along the way.
45 miles one way
never late for class
Should I be reassured, or concerned that there seem to be a lot of police and ex-police on the forum?
Neither. They don’t know you.
Was your 1958 220s, 2 tone Blue by chance?
The overhead should have been the rounded bubble gum type