Enough of the history, let’s talk cars! So, if Lancashire used the Anglia, did everyone else use the same car? No, thank goodness.
There was a huge variety in the models used, in the make-up of the colour scheme and in the equipment used in or on the cars. But the type of car remained the same; they were basic run-of-the-mill, bottom-of-the-range, small-engine vehicles that were cheap to buy and cheap to run.
The ubiquitous Morris Minor saloon will be forever remembered as the archetypal panda car – I’ve even used it on the cover of this book – but not every force used them; far from it in fact. The Metropolitan Police, who were one of the last forces to adopt the unit beat scheme, were avid users of the Moggy but also ran fleets of Anglias, Austin 1100s and later the Austin Allegro and the Talbot Sunbeam.
Other forces included Devon, Derbyshire, Bristol City, Sheffield City, Glamorgan, Dyfed-Powys, Cheshire and Edinburgh City, but no doubt the Minor found favour with several others, too. The marque was perfectly suited to this type of work – it was easy to drive, reliable, cheap and (back in the day) looked the part. It wasn’t just saloons that were used either. Believe it or not, the Traveller was used by the Devon Constabulary, Edinburgh City, Leicestershire and Rutland, Wolverhampton Borough and the Ministry of Defence Police. The Minor vans, often referred to as 7cwt vans, had already been used for a number of years as Dog Section vehicles and in plain wrappers as SOCO (Scene of Crime Officer) and Photographic Department units. But now some forces started to paint them in blue and white to utilise as panda cars; however, the Wiltshire Constabulary painted theirs in tan and mustard – apparently they thought that this scheme might blend in rather nicely in the countryside where these cars were used as rural beat units. What were they thinking? The colours made a mockery of the fact that the cars were to stand out from the crowd, not blend in with the hedgerows! Wiltshire stuck with their unusual colour scheme and in later years used it on the Austin A35 van and even the Mk1 Ford Escort. But the Morris Minor has stood the test of time as there are about 20 former police Morris Minor 1000s still in existence with enthusiasts – more than any other type of police car in history. I have even raced against one owned by Chris Rea. He and I had a great battle at Snetterton while I was in the seat of an Austin A35.
Unusually, the Lothian and Peebles Constabulary’s Minors were in the darker Trafalgar Blue and White livery rather than the lighter Bermuda Blue used by most other forces. This was specified by the then Chief Constable, Willie Merilees, who wanted them to stand out from the lighter blue of the otherwise similar Edinburgh City cars.
Morris Minor 1000 ‘panda’ racing car
Guitarist and singer Chris Rea is well known for being a petrol head and, partly because of his Italian ancestral heritage, having a real passion for Ferrari – so much so that he made a film about his F1 hero, Wolfgang ‘Taffy’ von Trips, and commissioned a replica of his famous 1961 Ferrari 156 ‘sharknose’ F1 racing car. However, Rea has also raced in various series over the years, often but not exclusively in a selection of Lotus racers. He also worked occasionally as pit crew, anonymously, for the Jordan team in the early to mid-90s just to be involved (massive respect for that), and has owned a number of interesting road cars. However, as his song lyrics sometimes attest, he’s a man with a dry sense of humour and one of his current racers demonstrates that perfectly: a racing 1959 Morris Minor ‘panda’.
The car on the grid at Goodwood with other Historic Racing Drivers Club (HRDC) racers. The police sign was removed before the race actually commenced.
The car uses a BMC A-series engine as it did originally, but seriously modified and producing near three times its original output, as the 1.75-inch twin SUs and large oil-cooler attest.
Rea bought the car to enter historic racing, having raced as a guest in a couple of HRDC events, and decided he wanted to enter a Minor rather than one of the all-conquering A35s or A40s that dominate the smaller-engine class. HRDC organiser Julius Thurgood found this example rusting away in North Wales, removed it from that particular road to ruin and entrusted it to Alfa Romeo preparation experts Chris Snowdon Racing in November 2014 to be turned into a racing car. The project took the equivalent of one month’s full-time work and, because it was so rusty, ten days of welding alone. Rea apparently briefly considered restoring it as a road car once he realised its police history but decided instead to follow the original plan and nod to the car’s past by finishing it in a panda livery and entering it under the number 999. ‘Pc Rea 6149’ is painted on the doors in reference to Rea’s 2005 song ‘Somewhere Between Highway 61 & 49’.
Now I can hear every reader screaming, it can’t be an ex-panda car if it’s a 1959 as it would have been seven years old, at least, when the livery was introduced! And you’re right, a little liberty has been taken here, but the car is a genuine ex-police car which now provides fun for competitors and spectators alike at events such as the Goodwood Members’ Meeting, so I say good on him. It also shows just how iconic that panda car livery is, at least to a certain generation, plus it was kinda fun seeing Chris’s police car chase me on the track in my rear-view mirror …
The Mini, without question one of Britain’s greatest ever cars, was also very popular with the police in all its variants. Whether it was an Austin 850 saloon, a van, a Clubman estate, a Countryman estate, Leyland or Morris version, or even the Mini Moke, just about every model was used by a force somewhere in the UK. Bedfordshire and Luton Constabulary used large numbers of Minis before the locally produced Vauxhall Viva HB arrived, as did Durham, who chose to paint theirs black and white. Greater Manchester, Norfolk, Merthyr Tydfil, North Wales and Merseyside Police all had Minis, with their minuscule 850cc engine. From 1967 to 1979 the Hampshire Constabulary had no fewer than 900 Minis in service – a record for one make of car that still hasn’t been equalled. The Mini Moke, incidentally, was used by the Devon Constabulary and by the Dyfed-Powys Police, which must have provoked some strange looks from the public as the TV series The Prisoner was on at about the same time and starred the same car in a distinctly more sinister role.
Driving police Mini panda cars could be a very dangerous experience for the unwary copper. Nothing to do with the vehicle’s handling or its performance, but everything to do with the driver’s colleagues. Police officers are amongst the worst wind-up merchants on the planet (together with the military and nurses!) and are constantly thinking up new ways of getting one over on their colleagues. The Mini gave them the ideal tool; it became imperative that at the start of your tour of duty, having got the keys to the Mini panda car, the very first thing you did on opening the doors was to check under the seats. You had to lift the hinged front seats very carefully to check if there was a glass phial stink bomb placed beneath the seat frame. If you failed to check it and merely jumped in the car and sat on it, you were guaranteed a very smelly eight hours!
Two police officers were sent to a domestic dispute at a house and arrived in their Mini panda car. It was such a regular occurrence at this house that only one of them bothered to get out of the car whilst the driver stayed put. But on this particular day it all went horribly wrong. The door to the house flew open and the male occupant came straight out and plunged a large knife into the officer’s face before shutting the door again. The injured officer was bundled into the Mini by his colleague, who didn’t wait for an ambulance and decided to drive straight to hospital. With the knife embedded just below his eye, all the officer could see was the handle bobbing up and down as his panicked colleague drove the Mini panda car with blue light flashing and two-tone horns blaring the four miles across the city to casualty. He drove it as hard as he could with no holds barred, the wrong way down a one-way street, along a pavement, on two wheels around a roundabout with cars and pedestrians leaping out of its way. After emergency surgery the officer later revealed that