The Dutch Police Chased Speeders in a Porsche for 34 Years

Break the limit on a Dutch motorway in the 1960s and the thing filling your mirror was not the sedan you would expect from a highway patrol. It was a white Porsche, one light burning on the windshield, reeling you in at a speed almost nothing else on the road could touch. The Dutch national police ran sports cars from Zuffenhausen for more than three decades, and no force anywhere else stuck with the idea so completely. All of it came down to one odd requirement that knocked out every rival and left a single carmaker standing. This is the story of the largest Porsche police fleet the world has ever seen.

An Open-Top Problem Only Porsche Could Solve

Credit: Distilled

There was no speed limit on the Dutch motorways in the early 1960s, and the crash figures were getting worse as the traffic got faster. The job of policing all of it landed on the Rijkspolitie, the national force, which needed a car that could run down the quickest offenders without falling apart or falling off the road. The list of demands was strict. It had to be dependable and sure-footed at speed, and it had to shed that speed hard the moment an officer hit the brakes.