In pictures: Dutch police cars through the years

The Dutch police currently mainly use the Mercedes-Benz B-class as a BPV (basic police vehicle), but from 2025 it may slowly pass the baton to the Ford Kuga and BMW X1. Those two SUVs then become the police cars you will encounter most often. Yes, the police are also joining the SUV trend with their basic vehicles.

Toyota Land Cruiser (ANP)

It is certainly not the case that the Kuga and You may already know the Volkswagen Touareg in police colors and the Mercedes-Benz G-class has also been used by the police. Perhaps less well known is the police Toyota Land Cruiser, seen above in an archive photo from 2007.

Opel Astra police car (ANP)

A good example of the changing bodywork wishes in the car world and among the police is the Opel Astra in the photo above. Compact sedans were quite popular in the Netherlands for a long time and the police also went out with several examples. This was also done when consumers had largely left those cars for what they were. As far as we know, the Opel Astra G and Ford Focus II were the last compact sedans used by the police for high-profile police duties and they were certainly not sales bangers. Previously, the Opel Kadett-with-butt was also present.

The whole of the Netherlands seemed to drive Kadett in the 1980s and the police did so too (ANP)

In the 1990s, the police were initially well represented in the Opel Kadett and a little later, the Volkswagen Golf III in particular came into action quite extensively. However, there was also a piece of Dutch pride to be found among the police, namely the Volvo 340. The Born-built ‘Swede’ with its origins in the passenger car branch of Daf was regularly seen in the 1980s and early 1990s with the orange striped color scheme.

The undisputed king in those colors was of course the Porsche 911 of the National Police for many years. The local police officers (Municipal Police) drove much more modest cars such as the Ford Escort, Volkswagen Golf and of course the Opel Kadett. The Porsches of the National Police were a familiar sight in our country for quite a long time, because the whole story started in 1962 with the Porsche 356 Spider.

Porsche 356 of the National Police in 1968 (ANP)

The Porsches were put into service in the early 1960s to enforce traffic on the highways, where it quickly became busier and the number of accidents also increased rapidly. At the time, the regular police cars would have made a fuss if they had to respond quickly on the highways; In the 60s and 70s, cars such as the Volkswagen Beetle and 1500, Daf 33 (and 32 Bestel) and the Simca 1000 were in police service. So you can say that the police fleet always followed – sometimes with a bit of delay – the development of the Dutch fleet, as is now also happening with the Kuga and the X1.