Cops and Robbers. Ant Anstead

      So where did the term ‘panda car’ come from? None of us has ever seen a blue and white furry bear (well, I hope not for your sake) so it is likely that the name stems from the fact that press interest in this new policing initiative was huge and there were photos of the cars printed in the papers, which of course made them look black and white. The name was either penned by a journalist or more likely was coined by a Lancashire Police mechanic who, whilst reading one of said papers, passed comment that they now looked like pandas! Whichever one it was, the name has now become part of the English language and is a term still used today by police and public alike who are too young to have even been born when the first Anglias rolled out across Lancashire’s sprawling housing estates.

      It has also been suggested that the name originated from the term ‘Pursuit and Arrest’, but this isn’t true because the cars were never intended for pursuit purposes. Just to add to the confusion, a couple of years after Lancashire launched the scheme the Home Office conducted an experiment along similar lines with a number of forces being required to paint some of their cars, both unit beat cars and traffic patrol cars, in black with white doors. Forces like Durham, West Riding, Salford City and Plymouth City Police painted cars like the Ford Zephyr, Hillman Hunter, Austin Westminster, Morris 1800S, Mk2 Jaguars and Mini vans in the distinctive colour scheme. They looked great and enhanced the visual impact of the cars, just as Colonel St Johnson had seen in the USA several years earlier. Somewhere along the way things may have blended together and become a bit confused, but whatever the case, the panda car name has stood the test of time even if the original concept hasn’t.

      Just about every force in the UK took the system on board, and from 1967 onwards blue and white panda cars were seen everywhere, making the thin blue line a little more pliable. But by 1979 the panda car’s days were numbered, because the police service was being forced to make drastic budget cuts (again, it appears nothing changes …) by the new Conservative government. The fleet manager of the Hampshire Constabulary looked out of his office window at a yard full of blue and white Minis and Mk2 Ford Escorts and concluded that to order the cars in either Bermuda blue for Leyland products or Nordic blue from Ford cost him extra. To then paint the doors white and have to re-paint them blue again prior to selling them off at auction cost £80 per car. He dropped the blue cars, ordered them in white and at the stroke of a pen the idea was lost forever. Fleet managers talk to each other on a regular basis and it wasn’t long before other forces followed suit, although one or two forces like Cheshire and North Wales Police persevered for several years and still had a number of Mk2 Vauxhall Astras and Austin Maestro vans in the familiar colours into the mid-1980s.

      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’.