Scott Banks

My dad had one. It was a former Lasalle Ontario police car and I think it was pretty rare. I've never seen another one. Not during the time my dad had it in the early 80's or since. It looked exactly like a Caprice but it was a little bit shorter. If it wasn't parked next to a Caprice you probably wouldn't notice it was any different. The only thing that looked different was that the rear roof pillar was just a little bit narrower than the Caprice. That kind of tells me that the passenger cabin was just a shade smaller as well as the hood and trunk lengths. Overall it probably added up to about a foot less length. No idea what chassis it was built on. I remember my dad at the time mentioning that he was told it was kind of a test car or something. GM made them to see if the cops liked the slightly shorter, lighter, faster model. I guess they didn't because I never saw another one.

Anyway, he drove it into the ground, as he always did with his cars, and junked it about 1986. The junk yard gave him a good price for it because it had the interceptor engine. My dad said the car was unbelievably fast. He nearly wrecked it one night seeing what it could do. He wound up on some guy's front lawn about 5 feet from the house after it got fishtailing at high speed. He took out a few shrubs in the front yard but no real damage or injury resulted I was told. I was wondering how rare that car was if anybody knows. I kind of suspect it was very rare.

Scott Banks

Just to clarify... it was badged as a Bel Air. If I remember correctly the chrome badges were on the rear quarter panel near the tail lights. Bel, and just below and slightly forward, Air. They might have been on the fenders. I can't really remember now. It was a long time ago. But I think they were on the quarters.