- Some police forces in Indiana are experiencing problems with their Dodge Durango SUVs
- Oil-cooler failure is pointed to as the cause of the issue, which requires engine replacement to fix
- One force says that, as a result, it’s being forced to sell off the police SUVs at a loss
It’s never a good day when the engine in one’s car decides it would rather have a new career as an oily paperweight instead of performing its duty powering a useful mode of transportation. That problem is magnified when the vehicle in question is part of a large fleet — and is further amplified when the rigs are relied upon by first responders.
But that’s exactly the case being alleged by police departments across the great state of Indiana, where officers are reporting a raft of engine failures in their Dodge Durango cruisers. Whilst not brand-new, the vehicles are apparently new enough that oil coolers should not be failing en masse, leaving constabularies with a fistful of no-go and a whole lot of immobile vehicles.
According to reports, the problem is of oil and coolant mixing, creating the sort of frothy milkshake no one wants to see on the dipstick of their car’s engine. Tales exist of engines going bang! after fewer than 15,000 miles, though the number of hours on those engines, which can spend untold time simply idling, is unclear.
Officers in the Merrillville Police Department wrote an open letter to their community addressing the issue, while the Indiana State Police is said to have indicated earlier this year that dozens of its Durango patrol vehicles suffered a similar fate, pointing out 39 of its 218 units experienced this mechanical problem.
As for Stellantis, it released a statement to local media saying its cop-grade Durango “meets or exceeds” federal motor vehicle safety standards and pointing to its deployment with “thousands of police agencies across North America” where it enjoyed “exemplary” overall feedback. Beyond that, “certain oil-cooler issues are difficult to detect, which may lead to collateral damage and a highly complex remedy.”
A quick perusal of customer communities at sites like Allpar and Mopar Insiders reveal plenty of talk about the issue, with one thread starting by alleging the V8-equipped Durango SUVs in question use precisely the same engine oil cooler as civilian vehicles, and that the part is thus not specific to cop cars.
Some talking heads on these forums are flapping their jaws that the failures must be on the heels of poor maintenance or crash damage; this is refuted in a reply posted this week by an anonymous but self-proclaimed “agency customer” of these rigs, claiming a 30% failure rate across both V6 and V8 Durango police vehicles.
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