Cops and Robbers: The Story of the British Police Car. Ant Anstead

      Most of the early Traffic Division cars were Wolseleys. They were seen as tough, reliable and capable vehicles, whose legendary status lives on today. The 12/48, 14/60 and 18/85 models were all used between 1937 and 1948, with the 18/85 probably being the first universally accepted standard patrol car, with a good number of forces opting to use them as their first official Traffic cars. That is, until that most famous of police cars arrived: the Wolseley 6/80. It was first introduced in 1948 but it wasn’t until the early 1950s that it found fame as a police car and was used by just about every force in the UK – but in particular by the Metropolitan Police, who used Wolseleys above anything else. The 6/80 had a top speed of 81mph and took almost 28 seconds to hit 60mph, which in comparison to some other cars of its era was actually quite slow. The new 6/90 took over the reins in 1954; by then performance had improved significantly, with a top end approaching 96mph with 10 seconds knocked off that 0–60 time. The big Farina-styled 6/99 and 6/110 saloons arrived in 1959, and although production of these cars ceased in 1968, some could still be seen patrolling our streets as late as 1972. The last Wolseleys to be seen in police livery were the BMC Landcrab-based 18/85 S Mk2 models used by the City of London Police in 1970; they were quite possibly the only force to do so. Despite all these models, it is probably the 6/80 that is remembered by people of that era as the police car, even though it’s likely many will confuse these cars with other similar makes and models of the time. That illuminated Wolseley badge on the grille (called a ‘Ghost Light’) looming large in your rearview mirror still induces an unsurpassed sense of dread amongst a generation.

      One of the cars that some less car-savvy members of the public might have confused with the Wolseley 6/80 was its Nuffield group stable mate, the Riley RM series (now famous to Archers’ fans as the car that retired history professor Jim Lloyd apparently drives), whose long flowing lines must make them one of the best-looking cars of the immediate post-war period. The William Morris-led Nuffield Group added the Riley to its portfolio of marques in 1938, buying the company and assets from the receivers personally then selling it at a substantial loss into the Nuffield Organisation. Thus Riley joined Wolseley and MG, plus some other companies such as SU Carburettors. Riley had produced a plethora of models in too low a volume to actually make money pre-war, and this, combined with spending money on racing, had led to substantial losses and the eventual sale. However, they were a great engineering-led company known for making class-leading engines and cars with real sporting pedigree. Mike Hawthorn famously started his career racing in a Riley, and the English Racing Automobiles (ERA) race cars can trace their roots to this marque, using a modified Riley engine. Morris were cash-rich at this time, partly because the Morris 8 had been so successful, but the war intervened before they could rationalise Riley, which was based in Coventry a little way from the group’s headquarters in Cowley, Oxfordshire, and which, like every other firm, had turned to war work from 1939.

      The result was that Riley developed a new car, the RM Series (with RM apparently standing for Riley Motors), almost autonomously using some Nuffield components. The old Riley-Coventry design team, led by Harry Rush, continued their sporting tradition and used their family of twin-high-camshaft, 4-cylinder engines (which owed much to Alfa Romeo racing-car design and were made as either a 1.5- or 2.5-litre form) in a new box-section chassis on which sat an ash-framed, steel-skinned bodyshell. The Citroën-esque torsion-bar front suspension and accurate rack-and-pinion steering, combined with half-elliptic springs, an anti-roll bar and traditional Riley torque-tube transmission (although this became a conventional propshaft on later models), was a winning recipe and was well received by sporting motorists and the police alike. At 3135 pounds unladen, it was perhaps a little heavy by the standards of the time, so acceleration was not quite as brisk as had been hoped by some, but even so enthusiasts loved what turned out to be the last ‘real Riley’. However, in 2.5-litre RMB to RMF form they could nudge 100mph with a 0–60 time of 16 seconds and do an American standing quarter in 20.8 seconds – which in comparison with the 6/80 of the same period made it the cheetah amongst a herd of hippos. They were initially produced at Riley’s in Coventry from 1946, but as Nuffield and then BMC began to rationalise, production was moved to MG’s works in Abingdon and 8,959 2.5-litre RMs were produced – a fair number for a car that succinctly spanned the change from vintage-era separate chassis to modern 1950s monocoque and remained competitive in handling and performance until its demise in 1953. As you have probably gathered, I have a real soft spot for the Riley RM, but plenty of forces outside of London did too, and even though it was expensive at £1125 in 1946 (a Wolseley 6/80 was only £767 when launched in 1948), plenty opted to use it, including Gloucestershire, Kent, Cambridgeshire, Portsmouth City, West Sussex and Lanarkshire, to name but a few.