Malloy and Reed are given an older cruiser with 300 miles to go until retirement. They quickly learn the car is extremely unreliable and barely works: the accelerator surges, the glove compartment door constantly drops on Reed's knees, the water hose breaks while they are sneaking up on a prowler suspect (actually just a man who once lived there), their malfunctioning taillights prevent them from writing a ticket to a citizen whose car had the same problem, the distributor cap fails when trying to respond to another call, and finally, after capturing a pursuit suspect, the car's brakes fail and the unmanned car totals itself on a light pole. Another call regarding a truck loading up at a warehouse leads to the arrest of a large group of organized burglars after Malloy notices a slight discrepancy in their otherwise foolproof plan.