Police Vehicles & Fleet News

Indiana State Police Are Putting 500 New Durangos on the Road. Here's Where the Old Chargers Are Being Sold, and What They're Bringing.

By UX Auctions Editorial Staff

The Indiana State Police are replacing a white Charger fleet that dates to 2010 with more than 500 blue-and-white Dodge Durango Pursuits. The retired Chargers are going to absolute auction in Pendleton, Indiana, in batches, and the last batch of 23 sold for a middle price of $1,500. Here is the sale, the numbers, and when the next one is likely.

INDIANAPOLIS — The most visible change to Indiana's highways in a generation is happening one trooper at a time. On November 12, 2025, at the Indiana State Police District 52 post on the east side of Indianapolis, the agency handed the first of its new blue-and-white Dodge Durango Pursuits to twenty probationary troopers from the 87th Recruit Academy, and put five Ford Mustang GTs in the same colors beside them. It was the first blue state police car Indiana had seen in sixty years. The agency had run white over blue in the early and mid-1960s, gone all white in 1966, all black in 1998 and back to white in 2006, and the white Chargers that still make up most of the fleet go back to 2010.

The new cars are the front end of a purchase that public records put at roughly $26 million for more than 500 Durango Pursuits, about $50,000 a unit before the radar, cameras, push bumpers and radios go in. The first phase was fifty Durangos and the five Mustangs. By February 17, 2026, four more probationary troopers at the Fort Wayne post in District 22 had their Durangos, and the handouts have continued post by post as recruits finish the academy. Superintendent Anthony Scott called the rollout a bridge to the future, and the agency's spokesman, Captain Ron Galaviz, said that once the transition is complete there will be no white patrol cars left, and that over the next year the fleet would look a whole lot different.

That sentence is the one that matters to anyone who buys retired police cars. A fleet of more than 500 new vehicles does not arrive without a fleet of roughly the same size leaving, and the Indiana State Police have already shown exactly where theirs goes.

The new blue-and-white Dodge Durango Pursuits lined up for the November 2025 rollout. Photo: Indiana State Police.

Where the Chargers are sold

A white Indiana State Police Dodge Charger Pursuit, side view, in a lot full of state police cars. — A white Indiana State Police Charger Pursuit, the car the Durangos are replacing, photographed in January 2019. Photo: Charles Edward Miller, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0.

The Indiana State Police sell their retired patrol cars through Don Smock Auction Company at 6531 South State Road 13 in Pendleton, Indiana, about thirty miles northeast of Indianapolis, in dedicated sales that carry the agency's name. Each one is an absolute auction, meaning every vehicle sells to the high bidder with no reserve, with live bidding on the lot and online bidding through the auction company's own site. Inspection runs from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. on the two days before the sale, every car is listed with its VIN, odometer reading and title status, and payment is due the day of the auction. Invoices under $6,000 can go on a card with a four percent fee; anything larger is a cashier's check, a wire or cash.

The auction company's results pages are public, and they tell the story of the transition in three chapters so far.

On July 9, 2025, four months before the blue cars were unveiled, the agency sold eighteen Chargers, 2016 through 2020 model years, for $76,700. The middle price was $4,000, the lowest $2,500 and the highest $7,900.

On November 12, 2025, the same day the new Durangos were handed out in Indianapolis, twenty-two more Chargers crossed the block in Pendleton, 2016 through 2022, for $96,600, a middle price of $4,375 and a range from $2,500 to $6,500. Two Durangos sold with them, a 2016 with 189,671 miles at $4,600 and a 2023 with 26,003 miles at $3,800, along with a 1991 Chevrolet pickup at $2,100.

On May 13, 2026, the Indiana State Police Spring Surplus Vehicle Auction sold twenty-three Chargers, 2019 through 2022, with odometers from 78,192 to 170,404 miles, for a total of $43,900. The middle price was $1,500. The top car, a 2020 with 114,006 miles, brought $4,700 after eight bids. Four 2022 Chargers, with between 113,000 and 170,000 miles, sold for $1,100 apiece, and a 2020 with 143,196 miles drew thirty bids on its way to $3,500. Twenty-three state police cars sold that afternoon for less than the price of one new Durango.

Sale	Chargers	Model years	Total	Middle price	Range
July 9, 2025	18	2016–2020	$76,700	$4,000	$2,500–$7,900
November 12, 2025	22	2016–2022	$96,600	$4,375	$2,500–$6,500
May 13, 2026	23	2019–2022	$43,900	$1,500	$1,100–$4,700

Across the three sales, sixty-three Chargers have left the Indiana State Police for $217,200, and the price has fallen as the batches have grown and the mileage has climbed. The July cars were older but had seen fewer miles; the May cars were newer, higher-mileage and more of them at once, with the whole state's buyers knowing the agency has several hundred more to sell. That is what an absolute auction does with a known supply, and it is why the people who bought a 2020 Charger Pursuit for $1,500 in Pendleton were not the same people reading that retired Chargers are hard to find.

Why the timing matters

Dodge built the last Charger Pursuit for the 2023 model year, and the end of the only rear-wheel-drive V8 police sedan has left agencies across the country holding on to the ones they have. A column in Police and Security News on October 13, 2026, described departments running cruisers well past their replacement mileage, Illinois State Police with more than a thousand vehicles due for replacement, and Arkansas troopers still driving 2023 Chargers while they wait for something to replace them with. The same column noted that used Chargers at online auction still command high prices.

Indiana is the exception that explains the rule. The agency stayed with Dodge when it chose the Durango, in part so parts would interchange with the Chargers it was keeping on the road, and it has been able to turn the old fleet over on a schedule because the new one arrived in bulk. Every other agency holding Chargers is holding them because it has to. Indiana is selling them because it can, and in an absolute auction with twenty cars at a time, that difference shows up in the hammer price.

The pattern of the sales so far is July, November, May, which puts the next Indiana State Police vehicle auction somewhere in the coming months, with the 2020 through 2022 Chargers that are still white today as the likely inventory. The auction company posts each sale on its upcoming auctions page a few weeks ahead, with the full lot list, photographs and inspection dates, and the UX Search agency page for the Indiana State Police shows anything the agency lists on the platforms UX Search reads.

A white Indiana State Police Dodge Charger Pursuit with the State Trooper door lettering, front three-quarter view. — An Indiana State Police slicktop Charger in September 2024, the kind of car now going through the Pendleton sales. Photo: Raymond Wambsgans, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0.

What the rest of the market says

Indiana's state surplus program as a whole runs through the Department of Administration, which redistributes what other state agencies can use and sells the rest to the public on GovDeals, just under $2 million worth over the past three years across 7,531 items, most of it to recyclers and resellers. The state police vehicles are the exception that goes to a live auctioneer, which is why they do not turn up in a GovDeals search and why so few buyers outside Indiana know the Pendleton sales exist.

For a sense of what the Pendleton prices mean, the UX Search sold archive recorded 1,260 closed government sales in Indiana over the past year, with a middle hammer price of $9,563 for cars, trucks and SUVs. Retired police sedans sit well below that figure everywhere, but a middle price of $1,500 for a lot of 2019 to 2022 Chargers is low by any measure in the archive, and it reflects a buyer's market created by one seller with hundreds of cars to move. Anyone weighing a bid at the next sale can check what the same model year has brought elsewhere on the Price Report, see every Charger listed by a government seller right now on UX Search, and compare the current bid against the sold archive on any listing page, where the price check shows the middle closed price for similar cars beside the bid.

A retired Indiana State Police Charger comes with the light bar and radio pulled, the decals removed and the paint it wore on patrol, and it has lived the life those odometers describe: highway miles at speed, long idling, and a maintenance program that kept it in service for a state agency. The ones sold in May had between 78,000 and 170,000 miles. The buyer who inspects on the two days before the sale, pulls the codes and knows what a Hemi or a Pentastar with 150,000 state police miles needs is the buyer those prices are waiting for.

The new fleet, and the next sale

The Durangos will keep arriving as recruit classes graduate, and the Mustangs, four of the first five assigned to master troopers with fifteen or more years of service, are posted to central Indiana, Fort Wayne, northwest Indiana, Evansville and Sellersburg, where the agency says their job is to be seen on the interstate rather than to chase. By the agency's own timeline, the white cars will be gone within about a year of the November rollout, which means several hundred Chargers have to pass through Pendleton between now and then.

UX Auctions will post the next Indiana State Police vehicle auction, with its lot list and inspection dates, as soon as it is announced, and the Price Report will carry the results when the hammer falls.

Sources: Indiana Capital Chronicle, November 13, 2025, and October 8, 2026; Government Fleet, June 19, 2024; Indiana State Police news releases, February 2026; Don Smock Auction Company results for the Indiana State Police Car Auctions of July 9 and November 12, 2025, and the ISP Spring Surplus Vehicle Auction of May 13, 2026; Police and Security News, October 13, 2026; the UX Search sold archive.