Yahoo Autos Australian Kia Stinger Cop Car Brings Thunder from Down Under to SEMA
What is a Korean sports sedan dressed up like a funny foreign police car (and with its steering wheel on the wrong side) doing at Las Vegas's SEMA aftermarket show? Kia wanted to show off how the Stinger, its rear-drive (with available all-wheel drive!) four-door hatchback, can do more than upend customer expectations of what a Kia can be. It can also surprise police-Australian police, to be more specific.
This Stinger, prepped for duty in the Queensland Road Policing division, is the first foreign-to Australia, that is-car to make the grade as a police vehicle. Previous squad cars have been homegrown Australian models (Holdens and the like). Apparently, the Kia performed well on paper and in track testing. We'd like to add as an aside that the Stinger's case likely was bolstered by the recent discontinuation on the Australia market of sporty rear-drive sedans such as the Ford Falcon and the Holden Commodore. You'd know the latter as the now dead Chevrolet Caprice police vehicle here in the United States; it was the larger version of the also now defunct Chevrolet SS sedan.
To hear the Queensland police department tell it, the only necessary modifications for transforming the Kia Stinger into a baddie-chasing cop car were the addition of an electrical wiring harness add-on to power the radio, extra lights, and siren-plus that radio, the extra lights, and the siren. Everything else about the Stinger GT is stock, including its 365-hp twin-turbocharged 3.3-liter V-6, its brakes, and its suspension. For now, the department plans to have 50 of the Stingers in its fleet by the end of the year, while we plan to make the joke, "Kia Stinger: It's Australian for police car."
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