Paramedic powerhouses: Dubai unveils Lotus Evora, Ford Mustang first-response vehicles

By now, every car fan should know about the Dubai Police. The Emirati law-enforcement agency operates a fleet of exotic cars – from a Lamborghini Aventador to a Bugatti Veyron – complete with flashing lights.

Now, Dubai’s paramedics are joining in on the fun, in what seems like a more appropriate use of high-performance cars.

The paramedics will soon take delivery of a Lotus Evora and a pair of Ford Mustangs, according to the United Arab Emirates’ The National (via Car and Driver). After all, in a medical emergency, time is always of the essence.

The Evora has already been nicknamed “First Responder,” and debuted at the Gitex Technology Week show in Dubai this week. Unlike the Dubai Police cars, which are used mostly for public relations, it has a more practical purpose.

The two-seat sports car isn’t meant to serve as an ambulance, but is crammed full of an ambulance’s worth of medical equipment to help first responders stabilize patients on site. It can also send and receive patient information to nearby hospitals.

The advantage of putting all of that into a sports car is, not surprisingly, speed. The average response time for an ambulance in Dubai is around eight minutes, but officials want to cut that to four minutes for all vehicles.

A fully-loaded ambulance might have trouble meeting that goal, but with a top speed of around 160 mph, it shouldn’t be a problem for the Evora.

It’s something that seems like it could only happen in Dubai, but the concept of a rapid-response medical vehicle isn’t entirely new.

London’s Helicopter Emergency Medical Services (HEMS) air ambulance uses cars to get to patients when the choppers can’t fly, or can’t land at a given site. Those cars are mostly Skoda Octavias, but HEMS has used Subaru WRXs as well.

Now if only we could have something like that in the U.S.