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

       Even after the advent of the 1903 Motor Vehicle Act, driving was still very much seen as a recreational activity, and, as this 1904 advert makes clear, the dress required to go any distance tended to confirm this.

      As cars became the norm and horses the exception, this changed. However, that unenforceable 1903 law had pitched the police into conflict with the motorist, and the pages of The Autocar, The Motor and other publications throughout the early twentieth century are filled with tales of pioneer motorists battling what they considered to be overzealous police. As speed cameras and average speed zones proliferate today, you could argue that that’s never changed, but the British police like to police by consent and the media has now educated large sections of the public to the dangers of speeding, so it’s no longer socially acceptable to boast of speeds attained on the road in the way that it was up until the 1980s.

      The first occasion on which a motor car was used by the police to apprehend a criminal was, as far as we know, on 15 August 1900, the very beginning of the twentieth century, at Moor Edge, Newcastle upon Tyne. A rider of a horse, who was drunk and causing havoc, was chased for a mile and arrested by a constable who had commandeered a Gladiator Voiturette from its owner, one F.R. Goodwin, who, perhaps unsurprisingly in this era when cars were few and far between, later achieved some fame as a racing driver. There are many subsequent incidents of private cars being commandeered by the police, so that fantasy of Clint Eastwood getting in your car and shouting ‘follow that car’ (or horse) may well have been more likely in 1904! Oh, and for the record I have, of course, commandeered a number of cars belonging to members of the public, and yes, of course I said the very same words. The Moor Edge incident demonstrates initiative and a grasp of then-current technology on the part of the arresting constable; both elements that were in shorter supply among the higher echelons of the police at this point. Much was made of this in the press and it certainly helped further the cause of the motor car over the horse in the general population’s mind, so it was a significant moment for the motoring ‘movement’ as a whole.

      Gladiator Voiturette

      Ironically, the Clement Gladiator 3.5hp Voiturette could not have been a more unlikely motorised hero, and it was far from the fire-breathing performance machine that its name suggested. It featured a 402cc single-cylinder engine and had a top speed of about 20mph, which it could obviously sustain far longer than a drunk man on a horse …

      Bicycle magnate Adolphe Clément first made a fortune producing pneumatic tyres, then later whole bikes, cars, motorcycles, airships and even aeroplanes! He saw the potential of the motor industry early on and invested in or promoted several marques. His Clement Gladiator was basically a Benz copy made by one of these firms, Cycles et Automobiles Gladiator of Le Pre Saint-Gervais, France, which was imported then by Goliath Co. of Long Acre, London. It’s thought they probably made a small number in the UK as well, although sources disagree on that.

      Rather wonderfully, the first cars officially recorded as having been purchased by the police are two 1903 Wolseley 10hp wagonettes (remember this is RAC hp tax, not BHP), touring cars which were purchased for use by the Met’s Commissioner of Police and the Receiver (a strange title to modern ears, which makes you wonder if the police have been placed in receivership, but it is actually the title of the officer responsible for the financing of the force). They were numbered A209 and A210; these number plates were still being used until very recently – A210 was on the Home Secretary’s car in the 1970s, but I’ve not been able to find out where it is now. I’d not realised that the police loyalty to the Wolseley marque stretched back to what were really the first proper police cars in the UK. It gives me a rather warm glow to think of this.

      1903 Wolseley, and why the police used this marque for so long

      The last Wolseley-badged car, an ADO 71 ‘WedgPrincess’, was produced in 1975, but even today, mainly because of the proliferation of period crime dramas from Miss Marple to Buster, the Wolseley brand is indelibly associated with police cars. There is actually a reason of sorts, but you’d never guess it in a million years because it is to do with, wait for it, submarines …

      In 1900 the ailing car side of the Wolseley machine tool business, which had grown from sheep-shearing machines, had been for sale for some months and had not found a buyer. The board had decided that making cars was too complex and, after some exploits that had not been entirely profitable, decided to concentrate on what they knew. That company still exists, successfully, today. The car side of the company was offered with their chief designer, one Herbert Austin, who would of course go on to found a motor company of his own. After almost 12 months of being touted around, and just when the directors were losing faith that it could be sold, the company was purchased by Vickers, even then a much larger concern with interests in defence engineering. The Wolseley car-making operation was moved to an existing Vickers factory, at Adderley Park, in Birmingham, in 1901, and new models were planned.

      Vickers was then working on Britain’s top-secret new weapon, the Holland-class submarine, which was the first submarine built for the Royal Navy. This project was meant to be conducted in great secrecy initially, although unfortunately an Edinburgh newspaper leaked the details and left the Admiralty no alternative but to admit to its production. However, although they had been considering diversifying into car production for some time, in hindsight it’s fairly clear that Vickers’ main motivation for the purchase of Wolseley was to set up a discreet operation to work on developing and then building engines for the submarine engineering project; which they did. Doing this in a car factory in Birmingham, many miles away from the boat’s development centre in Barrow-in-Furness or Vickers’ facility in Sheffield, was also of some value when it came to keeping the details secret. Of course, this meant that Wolseley was effectively the car arm of major government defence contractor, Vickers, so what was more natural than ordering government cars from Wolseley? They were actually genuinely very good cars, with a reputation for reliability forged in long-distance trials and a customer list of the great and the good, including royalty both at home and abroad, plus celebrities of the time such as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and politicians such as Cecil Rhodes. Wolseley continued to supply a variety of the War Office’s needs (the name of this department was changed to the Ministry of Defence in 1964), including re-engineering the SE5 fighter aircraft’s troublesome Hispano Suiza HS-8 liquid-cooled V-8 engine into the much more reliable higher-compression Wolseley Viper used in the SE5a.

      Between 1902 and 1906 Wolseley supplied 27 vehicles to the War Office, including large heavy tractors and six 10hp cars, which were fitted with ‘special tonneau’ bodies for the Royal Engineers. The