Exhibition at the Louwman Museum in The Hague
The Louwman Museum in The Hague (Netherlands) is probably one of the biggest, if not the biggest, private owned automotive museum in Europe. It is the world oldest private car collection. 2 generations have collected over 250 antique and classic cars. The collection is housed in a purpose built museum in The Hague, the city where the founder of the collection J.W. Louwman started his Dodge and Chrysler import company. The collection is regarded by experts as one of the most beautiful collections in the world. No better spot to have a exhibition on the dutch police Porsches as the Louwman Museum, the heart of the Dutch classic car world. The exhibion ran from jun till september 2016.
In 1962 the Dutch police had a squadron for the highways. And of course the officers needed a fast car for that purpose. Seen the experience that the German Police had with Porsches, one Porsche Porsche 356 B Cabriolet was ordered as a test. The Porsche succeeded with glance in the test. That’s why 40 Porsche 356B Cabriolets were ordered. The Porsche 356B that was on display at the exhibition is the oldest surviving police cars. It belongs to the batch of the 12 first delivered Porsches for the highway squadron. The Porsches were order at Pon’s Automobielhandel, the Dutch Porsche importer .
Strong selections determined who would be the officers to drive a Porsche. By preference the officers were married and had children. The outfit for the police officers was the typical white jacket and the helmet. The officers had to drive open air, unless temperature went below 2 degrees celsius. It was thought this would make the police officers look more humane and bring them closer to the other users of the highway.
The Porsche 356 B Cabriolets were soon replaced by the faster Porsche 356C Cabriolets. When these cars had to be replaced on their turn, there seemed to be a slight problem. Porsche ceased the production of the Porsche 356 that was replaced by the Porsche 911. However, there were no Porsche 911 Cabriolets at that time. The Dutch police could convince to Porsche to build another batch of Porsche 356C cabriolets exclusively for the Dutch police.
As soon as there was an open Porsche 911 available, the ‘old fashioned’ Porsche 356 were replaced with Porsche 911 Targa’s. From 1967 to 1996 there were some Porsche 911 Targa’s in service. The rather high price for both buying and servicing the cars, finally made an end to the era of the Dutch Porsche Police Squadron.
The exhibition at the Louwman Museum gathered cars from different collections to bring a brilliant view to the public of the different Porsches once in service.
Louwman Museum Dutch Police Porsche Exhibition
Pictures by Vintage Race Photography