Cars The Sweeney should have chosen

Get your trousers on, Internet, you're nicked. That is of course, if you have perpetrated a minor felony against the pantheon of great TV cars and thought the Ford Focus ST was a good choice for Regan and Carter.

That's right, next year's big-screen remake of classic telly cop show The Sweeney - starring Ray Winstone and Plan B - will trade rear-wheel-drive velour-specced saloons for a body-kitted and lightly shouty front-driver, beloved of a certain demographic.

Yes, it's a Fast Ford, so the lineage is correct. And, yes, the 250bhp ST promises to be a cracker. But are we alone in thinking it's not exactly... the right choice?

This got us thinking. Below these words sits a link to a gallery of cars Top Gear reckons should have been picked for next year's film remake of the show. Have a flick through to get your creative juices flowing, and then let us know below what cars you would've liked to see in The Sweeney. There's just one caveat: it has to be on sale today, or coming up for sale in 2012

Gallery: cars The Sweeney should have chosen

Actually, we're now wondering how you update any 60s/70s/80s cop show cars. After all, Starsky and Hutch would struggle to find a V8-engined Ford coupe that wasn't a Mustang these days. Steve McGarrett of Hawaii Five-O or Kojak from, erm, Kojak, would find themselves in even more bother. McGarrett's preferred Mercury brand has disappeared altogether and Kojak's standard issue Buicks are all pseudo-Lexus crossovers now. Not the kind of thing onto which you can clamp a magnetic blue-light.

And how about that most charismatic pairing, Danny Wilde (the late Tony Curtis) and Sir Brett Sinclair (the very much alive Sir Roger Moore) in The Persuaders, the most expensive show ever made for British TV? It's all to easy to suggest a new Aston DBS and a Ferrari 458 to replace the classic DBS/Dino combo, but TV shows - UK TV shows - just don't have that kind of budget these days.

So have a trawl through the gallery below for a spot of nostalgia and then let us have your ideas on The Sweeney and everything else. And a prize* for anyone that can come up with a better all-American combo than Farah Fawcett and a stripy 70s Mustang.

*No prize

Gallery: classic telly cop show cars, including Magnum and Miami Vice