Mr. Jim Post

Author: Ed Sanow, Jim Post
...
Find out how to tackle this project the right way with help from Jim Post, founder of Police Car Owners of America, and Ed Sanow, author of many well-known publications on police cars.
...
Ed Sanow and Jim Post have done an excellent job in collaborating and producing a book that not only addresses the basic questions asked by those just getting into the hobby, but for those of us already in the hobby it helps provide a base from which we can help others.

TALBOTVILLE, Ont. -- The amenities were spartan when James Post started driving a patrol car with the Kansas City, Mo., police department 42 years ago.

"There was no air conditioning, no cruise control, no AM radio, no power anything," says Post, who retired after 25 years of service.He is president of the Police Car Owners of America, a car club he founded that focuses on restored and replica police vehicles.
...
Post and 24 of his colleagues dropped in at the Ford assembly plant in St. Thomas, Ont., recently for a tour of the global source of the Crown Victoria, the prime choice of police patrol vehicles for Canadian and American police forces.

The visit, with owners from as far away as California, Utah and New Mexico, was part of the club's 16th annual national convention, a three-day affair in Dearborn, Mich.

During his career, Post has witnessed the evolution of the patrol car.

"I can remember us getting air conditioning in the early '70s and AM radios in the '80s.Before that, the guys used to put one of those little transistor radios on the dash, but they'd always slide off the first time you went around a corner," says Post, who lives in Eureka Springs, Ark.

Today, an officer's mobile "office" has all the comforts and amenities, the electronic technology and computerized equipment that veterans such as Post could not even have imagined early in their careers.

"Police cars today are much safer and have all those creature comforts -- although they're not always faster," Post says with a grin.

The added safety features, such as front and side air bags and side curtains, plus electronic aids such as traction and stability controls, are a huge improvement over earlier generations of cruisers.

"We didn't even have seat belts in our cars for the first four or five years I was working," Post says.

They improved upon the generic "police" or "highway patrol" toys most often manufactured before, said James Post, a retired Kansas City officer who founded the Police Car Owners of America.

"Because of the detail, the cops just fell in love with them," said Mr. Post, an Arkansas resident who owns about 1,000 of the diecast metal replicas.

These days the vehicles change hands at police memorabilia shows along with department patches and license plates, he said.A guidebook lists the going price for all Road Champs cars ever made.

Some trying to cash in on the phenomenon have even tried to sell counterfeit toy cars, said Mr. Post, who helped design police cars for Road Champs in past years.

Of course, fire engines and ladder trucks are just as collectible.

And a British company recently released a new toy pumper and ladder truck modeled after a county Fire Department vehicle at the Jacobsville Fire Station in Pasadena.

As part of its "Heroes Under Fire" series, Corgi produced a limited-edition replica of the E-One Quint.The department isn't selling them to the public.

Find out how to tackle this project the right way with help from Jim Post, founder of Police Car Owners of America, and Ed Sanow, author of many well-known publications on police cars.

This one-of-a-kind collection features numerous how-to projects from Bob Bond, Ron Beam, Von Franco and Jimmy C., Blaster, Mokoto, and others.
...
Find out how to tackle this project the right way with help from Jim Post, founder of Police Car Owners of America, and Ed Sanow, author of many well-known publications on police cars.

There are no more than 25 dealers of used police cars in the nation, said Jim Post, president of the Police Car Owners of America, an international car club.Post said KC Motor Vehicle is the only specialized dealer he knows of in Kansas and Missouri.

James Post entitled Police Cars - Restoring, Collecting & Showing America's Finest Sedans, published in 2001.The information and pictures are found nowhere else.

Forget buying the "mint, unrestored, low-mileage original".Unfortunately, I've always been a sucker for this bit of mythology.Maybe the police chief had a car he never drove, maybe a private citizen ordered a police car and saved it.
...
While discussing this subject with Jim Post, a retired municipal police sergeant and President of the Police Car Owner and Operator's Association (PCOOA), I thought his comment captures the essence of this issue quite well.Jim was speaking with a factory representative of Chevrolet who claimed that as a part of endurance testing its fwd police package, the test vehicle was driven into a curb at 10mph many times.Jim replied that he would like to see that done at a real-world 30 or 40mph.

The museum is maintained by Jim Post, president of the Police Car Owners of America.