Recently the question came up as to how a person could positively determine whether an old Plymouth, if its previous ownership is unknown, had been a police car. If it is not possible to trace the previous owners one should be able to find tell-tale clues such as a plain-jane body style, rather plain interior and, on many cars, a dashboard filled with extra holes for various switches. Commonly used rubber antennae hole plugs can also be a give-away. Heavy duty cooling components, a large engine and heavy duty wheels and suspension are also good clues.
Positive identification can also be made using the car's serial number. Since 1959, Plymouth has used a coded serial number - all those letters and numbers mean something - from the type of car and body style to the type of engine and even where the car was built. Decoding the serial number should provide the final proof. Plymouth police car codes run as follows:
1959 - Third digit of the serial number should be a "9"
1960 - Second digit should be a "9"
1961 - Second digit should be either an "0" or a "9"
1962-64 - Second digit should be a "9"
1965 - Second digit should be a "8"
1966 thru at least 1974 - Second digit should be a "K"
Beginning with 1967 production, the two-letter body code also indicates a police package, using the following codes:
PK - Fury Police
RK - Belvedere Police
OK - Polara (Dodge) Police'
WK - Coronet (Dodge) Police
Information for later models was not available but it is assumed that the sequencing remained much the same into later years. For 1974, the code OK indicated a Monaco (Dodge) police car.
Visit our main squads page or our squad engines page.
For more information, check out Dodge, Plymouth, and Chrysler Police Cars 1956-1978, for about $16 (that's with a discount). To buy it on-line from Amazon.com, click here. Or, for the 1979-1994 volume, click here.