Criminals of the Czech Republic need to worry now that they aren’t likely to outrun the police. The Police of the Czech Republic, the country’s national police service, recently converted a confiscated 2011 Ferrari 458 Italia into a police car, which was actually cheaper than buying one of their usual Škoda police cars.
Since confiscating the Ferrari 458 Italia cost Czech police nothing, they were able to convert it into a police car for less than 340,000 CZK ($14,000), which is less than a brand new Škoda Scala. However, it did require an additional 130,000 CZK ($5,350) to get it back up and running, as it had sat in storage for ten years. The Police of the Czech Republic claim the cost of running the Ferrari 458 cop car will only be 25,000 CZK ($1,028) for 2022. I’d like to see what its repair bills will be over the next few years of use, though. It might only have 2,000 kilometers (1,242 miles) on it, but it’s still an 11-year-old Ferrari, so it isn’t going to be cheap to maintain.
To turn the Ferrari 458 Italia into a cop car, it was repainted from its original red to the police department’s livery. It was also given a camera system, a radio, police lights, a rear inscription display, and a radar gun. I have to say, it looks pretty good with a police livery and a roof-mounted light bar. That being said, the Ferrari 458 Italia is so pretty on its own that it’d look good in any livery or any color.
The Czech police department confiscates hundreds of cars every year. In the past year alone, over 900 cars were seized. Most of the cars that are taken from criminals are sold and the proceeds are supposed to be used to cover the damage caused by said criminals. However, Czech police do keep some of the vehicles for their own use and this Ferrari 458 Italia is one of them. While the Ferrari isn’t the rarest or most expensive car that Czech police have taken, it is the most luxurious of its seized cars to be converted for police duty.
According to Czech police, the Ferrari 458 Italia will be used by the Special Surveillance Department of the Czech Republic and will only be driven by specially trained officers. It will be used to combat illegal street racing and chase down stolen vehicles, albeit mostly the latter. More specifically, it seems the Czech police department’s main reason for converting the Ferrari was to combat international vehicle theft. Apparently, there’s a real problem with exotic vehicles being stolen internationally and trafficked through the Czech Republic into neighboring countries, so police think the high-performance 458 can help.
Other countries do this too. It isn’t entirely uncommon to see a police department use exotic supercars to chase down baddies in other exotic supercars. The Italian State Police have a Lamborghini Huracán, which it once used to transport a kidney in an emergency. Dubai police also famously have a fleet of supercars and hypercars to combat its ultra-high-end street racing. So, police departments using supercars isn’t unheard of, but it is interesting to see just how little it cost Czech police to outfit a Ferrari 458 Italia—one of the best supercars of this century—for duty.
