Take a look at Shanghai's spankin' new BMW police cars

With the Expo clock ticking down, it seems Shanghai wasn't only content to renovate and renew neighborhoods and subway systems. Police cars got an upgrade too - going from old and sturdy VWs to these new and shiny BMWs.

So what's the deal with these new police cars anyway? China Hush, who translated the article from Netease, says they're World Expo escorts. But why in the world would you need a 700,000RMB BMW 5 Series in order to escort people? Do they think they'll be getting into chases on the Yan'an Expressway? Maybe they were afraid that, with all the fancy cars floating around nowadays, nobody would take them seriously in their old Santanas? Granted, German police use BMWs as patrolcars, but that's Germany. They have an autobahn and it's not an import.

The government isn't saying. As Sinobeat points out, "I have searched through the web for a while and find that related reports were alarmingly uninformative, only a couple of pictures and few words. It seems that the government has kept the details to itself to avoid negative comments."