In 1973 the Belgian Highway patrol ordered 20 Porsche 911 E Coupe to monitor the traffic on the highways.
Most other countries (Holland, Germany…) had ordered Targa’s for their patrolling officers.
Reason being that the co-driver could stand up on the seat facing traffic and monitoring traffic.
Most of the time the cars were used on the emergency row driving in reverse towards oncoming traffic in order to warn them about upcoming traffic jams.
Why the government and the Belgian Rijkswacht decided to buy Coupe instead of Targa’s does remain a mystery.
Also they decided to go for the E and not the most sporty and fastest version being the S.
This had probably to do with some kind of energy saving spirit.
Fast forward to 1976. The first series of cars had served the Police very well and the cars were up for replacement.
Most of them having done up to 500 k Km’s. Only a couple of these early 911 E’s do remain.
Before ordering the next batch of car the head of Belgian Police sat together with D’Ieteren and as the Police did not
want to give the civilians the impression they had the fastest cars they settled for the 911 small body Targa.
After some, probable informal, contacts with Porsche, some 20 Carrera RS type 911/83 engines were still found.
Therefore it was decided to order these small bodied 911 Targa’s but with the state of the art 210 bhp legendary Carrera RS engine.
Thus a series of twenty cars with their own chassis number sequence saw the light.
The Targa’s were equipped as Police cars, meaning they received a blue gyrophare, the sirens, the stop signal, the CB radio etc…
Thus equipped with the targa roof these small bodies cars were really fast.
They were as fast as the 1973 Carrera RS.
Therefore the police officers eligible to drive those cars were sent on intensive car control courses and never the less some cars were involved in bad accidents.
After the 1976 batch of cars the Belgian Police did order a final series of 20 cars over the years 1978-1982.
These cars, although have the wider Carrera body, were SC’s.
The first ones only having in the region of 180 bhp and the last ones having the 204 bhp engine.
These cars, although very strong and reliable, were by far not as fast as the 1976 cars.
Therefore the 1976 remain the pinnacle of the Belgian Police Porsche’s.