The Villa Rica Police Department is going to a new-look patrol car model and with it a new slogan.

Ford Motor Company has discontinued use of the Crown Victoria that has been so popular with law enforcement agencies and after looking at other makes and models the Villa Rica Police Department decided to purchase three six-cylinder 2013 Ford Interceptors made especially for law enforcement use. They will continue to purchase Interceptors each year until the entire fleet has been turned over.

“We looked at the Dodge and Chevrolet but we’ve had a good track record with Ford over the years,” Police Chief Michael Mansour said.

The new cars have a lot of power, much more than the old eight-cylinder patrol cars. As compared to 265 horsepower of the old, eight-cylinder patrol cars, the new police cars have 288 horsepower.

“They’ll get up and go,” Mansour said.

Rather than the slogan used by most law enforcement agencies — “To Serve and Protect” — the new VRPD patrol cars bear the slogan “Serving with Integrity.” The words will also be taking the place of the old slogan on the older police car models.

“We’re going to put it on our old cars, we’re going to put in on our letterhead when we redo it, we’re going to put it on everything,” Mansour said. “That’s one of the things we stress to our officers in every training class, we discuss ethics, we discuss integrity and how important it is to protect your name, your badge and your department. That’s why I think we’ve got the quality of employees that we have.”

The striping on the new cars is also different than the older patrol cars and is something that was a collaborative effort by Mansour and Patrol Capt. Scott Parker working with the person who stripes the cars. The most noticeable feature is that the word “POLICE” is much more prominent.

“The old striping design wouldn’t fit the body shape of the new cars,” Parker said. “So we kind of all spit-balled ideas. We didn’t want it to be so different form the old cars that it looked like a completely different department, but we wanted it upgraded and newer looking. One of the things I wanted was ‘POLICE’ in great big lettering and we kind of went from there.”

Mansour added that uniformity in the cars helps the department put up a united front and fosters cohesiveness among the department’s officers.

“I stress uniformity big time,” he said. “When I got here we had five different color cars and I wanted to make sure we’re uniform. That’s why one division doesn’t have a different car than another division because we try to keep everything uniform. We’re all police officers and when you start to do that specializing stuff you start dividing a department even more, so I’m real particular about our cars and I think we’ve been a closer department because of that. We didn’t have a choice in this case, but we still wanted the logoing to be as close as possible to the old one.”

With the department committed to purchasing three new patrol cars per year, it will take time to change the entire patrol division’s cars to the new model.

It will be a few more weeks before the new patrol cars are seen in action due to a technical issue. Ford sent out the wrong measurements to the equipment manufacturers so the light bars, rear cages and other equipment that was made to go in the new cars is having to be remanufactured to fit.

“It may be another month before they’re on the road,” Parker said.