1957 Ford Custom

Norris Sletten shared this information. "The officers who were issued the '57 Fords received a memo stating that Ford recommended not running the engines in excess of 5000 rpm which, they said, equated to 119 mph with the standard transmission or 135 mph with the automatic transmission.  This writer can assure you that the '57 stick would go faster than 119 any day of the week (and usually did). You couldn't get the 3.1 rear end auto tranny units to 135 because there wasn't enough power to get them up to 5000 rpm."

Though Ford doesn't acknowledge building them as a police package, a handful of the Highway Patrol's ’57s used the F-Code 300 hp Supercharged 312. The troops that drove them say there was nothing quicker when they worked right. Unfortunately, they were plagued with trouble and the majority of them had the superchargers removed. The resulting normally aspirated low-compression engines performed poorly.