The best Chevrolet you can't buy has gone on sale. It's the Australian Holden-based Chevrolet Caprice police car that General Motors won't let dealers sell to civilians, though a couple lucky buyers got them before the General slammed shut an inadvertent loophole.

According to Automotive News, GM failed to clearly ban civilian sales in its Caprice agreement with dealers. The company's crack legal team closed that barn door after only a couple of horses escaped.

The News says Criswell Chevrolet in Gaithersburg, Md., posted 13 of the cars on its website -- until the Jalopnik blog noticed and wrote about it and GM sprung to action. Owner Harry Criswell told the News he sold only one or two to non-cops before GM got to him.

The rest of us, apparently, won't see them until the cop cars are retired and go to auction.

And what a shame. Police testing has shown the Caprice to be the most gratuitously fun, still practical and moderately priced (in the mid-$30,000s) performance Chevy since the 1996 Impala SS -- the last rear-drive Chevy sedan that was itself a civilian version of the brand's police car. It goes, stops and handles.

The Caprice is basically a larger version of the Pontiac G8, the well-done, rear-drive, V-8 based on the Commodore from GM's Holden unit in Australia, that briefly appeared before GM killed Pontiac. The good-looking Caprice has a 6.0-liter, 355-hp V-8, offers rear- or all-wheel-drive and boasts 0-60 in less than 6 seconds.

GM said this week that early buyers include a police agency in Iowa and a sheriff's department in Georgia (wouldn't Buford T. Justice would look good in one chasing Burt Reynolds' Trans Am?).