The Maserati MCPura Is Italy’s Latest Incredible Police Car

Our police cars in Britain really are a bit rubbish (save for the Lexus IS-F and Mitsubishi Evo X they once used in Hull). While our officers are lucky to get their hands on a nice Volvo estate, their counterparts in other parts of the world often get supplied with far cooler transport. There’s the USA’s meaty V8 Dodge Chargers, the Nissan Skyline GT-Rs once employed by Japan, and whatever supercar the Dubai 5-0 has most recently stickered up in its distinctive white and green livery.

Then, of course, there’s Italy, famous for deploying the Lamborghini Gallardo, Huracan and Urus for highway patrol and high-speed medical transport. Now, the nation is welcoming another of its homegrown supercars into its law enforcement fleet – the Maserati MCPura.

The recently renamed update for the MC20 is joining the ranks of the Carabinieri, Italy’s slightly scary but extremely stylish police corps which, while functionally a law enforcement service, is actually administered by the country’s armed forces. 

That means that rather than the pale blue and white Polizia di Stato livery you’ve likely seen on those Lambos, it gets dressed up in one of the coolest police schemes of all, the Carabinieri’s deep navy blue with red swooshes.

Luckily, it’s not a car that’s going to have apprehended crims stuffed into its back seat, mainly because it doesn’t have a back seat. Like those Lambos, its main duty will be high-speed medical missions, transporting organs and blood to those in urgent need of them (a job that, rather surprisingly, the Carabinieri have previously used a Lotus Evora for). 

That means it’s been fitted out with special storage equipment for this job in addition to the usual suite of blues and twos. Its 621bhp 3.0-litre twin-turbo V6, allowing it to hit 62mph in 2.9 seconds and a top speed of 202mph, should help with the ‘high-speed’ part of that equation, too.

It’s not the country’s only high-performance machine taking on Carabinieri duties, either. It’s been unveiled alongside an Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio that’ll also be undertaking rapid medical transport duties. Basically, if you’re whizzing up one of Italy’s autostradas and see one of this duo baring down behind you, we implore you to get out of the way, tempting as it’d be to hang around and look at them.