Police cars through the years

Over the decades, the UK’s police forces have patrolled our roads in a huge variety of vehicles. From the humble Morris Minor to the luxury barge that is today’s fourth-generation Range Rover, and from the pootling Austin Allegro to the lightning-quick Rover SD1 3500, vehicles of all sizes, speeds and spec levels have been used by our various regional law and order forces.

Two things have been reasonably constant: the police have tended to go for cars that could shift a little, especially when doing traffic duty rather than simply patrolling the neighbourhood; and the various regional forces have bought British, tending to choose vehicles assembled on these shores and/or by British-owned companies. Hence the dominance of Ford, Vauxhall and British Leyland during the 50s, 60s and 70s: you can still see this policy at work today, with British-built cars like the Vauxhall Astra, Jaguar XF and Land Rover Discovery featuring in police fleets up and down the country.

The other great thing about the police cars of yesteryear is that they naturally have a bit of a backstory behind them. Buyers of classic cars are often swayed by the thought of owning a vehicle that will have bustled up and down our motorways catching speeding drivers, or maybe hared around a city centre in pursuit of a getaway car. Yes, ex-police cars are a whole sub-genre of classic cars in their own right, often much coveted and always protected, we imagine, with some good classic car insurance.

Pandas and jam sandwiches

We should get a couple of nicknames out of the way first. Originally coined because the first varieties sported a black and white livery, the term ‘panda car’ denoted (and can still denote) a police car used for ‘area’ or neighbourhood duties, rather than traffic enforcement. These generally smaller, less powerful cars won’t tend to be tearing up and down the motorway in pursuit of speeding motorists or other felons: they’ll be patrolling their local beat.

The similarly evocative ‘jam sandwich’ nickname came into force in the 1970s, when police cars changed from their traditional blue and white livery to a white background with a wide fluorescent orange stripe along the side.

These days, just to eke out the food metaphor, police vehicles sport ‘Battenburg’ markings – that blue and fluorescent yellow check pattern – and the jam sandwich, which adorned many of the police vehicles of our childhoods, is no more.

Here are some iconic police cars from down the decades…

Wolseley 4/50 and 6/80

This pair of postwar models from Wolseley were hugely popular with police forces – particularly the 6/80, whose straight-six engine was good for 85mph, all that early 1950s police officers could want and more.
Wolseley tended to be one of the more traditional of the British marques and, although they remained in production until 1954, these cars retained something of a pre-war feel with their imposing silver radiators, split windscreen and polished wood dashboard. Mechanically, however, they were quite modern with their springless torsion bar suspension, monocoque chassis, column gears and shaft-driven overhead six-cylinder engine.

No wonder the handsome, nostalgic Wolseleys remained in favour with the police, for skid pan and mechanical training, until well into the 1960s.

Triumph TR4

Manchester City Police acquired a fleet of nippy Triumph TR4s to keep tabs on the city’s criminals in the 1950s. The TR4’s 2.2-litre, four-cylinder engine combined with its light weight (this was a two-seater, after all) could reach a top speed of 110mph.

Perhaps more significantly for a job where rapid response was indispensable, the TR4 could get from stationary to 60mph in a shade over 10 seconds. We just hope those Manchester cops were driving these cars safely as well as quickly, as the first production runs of the TR4 came without seatbelts, the three-point seatbelt only coming into use in 1959.

Incidentally, numbers of the quick ‘50s Triumph are holding up well, with the website How Many Left informing us that 922 TR4s are still on the road, with a further 228 registered SORN. Those numbers, though, are still low enough to give it rarity as well as classic status, and any TR4s out there will be prime candidates for classic car insurance.

Ford Zephyr

Ford’s 1950s/60s saloon (specifically its 1956-62 Mk2 and 1962-66 Mk3 iterations) will be intimately known to all viewers of Z-Cars, the iconic 1960s /70s police drama. And fans will be pleased to know that that long-running series got things right on the automobile front, as the Zephyr (in particular the Mk3) was indeed a popular patrol car for many of Britain’s police forces during this time.

With more than 800 episodes aired, Z-Cars can count itself as one of Britain’s most successful police-based TV series of all time – and those Zephyrs (and Zodiacs, the Zephyr’s slightly more upmarket sibling) can take quite a lot of the credit.

Britain’s police forces adopted the Mk3 soon after its launch in 1962 – and the true-to-life Z-Cars quickly followed suit. The Mk3 was longer, lower and, thanks to some clever compression business, got a further 20bhp out of the same 2.5-litre engine as its predecessor.

A key factor in the Zephyr’s use was the new motorway network, and a corresponding need for powerful, high-speed cruisers to patrol it.

Jaguar Mark II / S-Type

If the Ford Zephyr was one beneficiary of the new motorway era of the early 1960s, the Jaguar Mark II also got in on the act in a big way. After all, Britain’s police forces suddenly needed a vehicle that could cover long distances at high speed, and the second generation of Jaguar’s big, comfortable and powerful saloon ticked these boxes in some style.

With brilliant timing, the car was launched in 1959 – the year that saw the opening of the UK’s first major motorway. Across the 1960s, those luckier members of the constabulary – or rather, those who had proved themselves adept at high-speed driving – might be given the keys to a 3.8-litre Mark II, capable of 220bhp, a 0-60mph sprint time of 8.5 seconds, and a top speed of 125mph.

This car also had its own small-screen moment, albeit a few decades later: it was the favoured vehicle of everyone’s favourite pipe-smoking, crossword-solving Oxford detective, Inspector Morse. The Mark II would have been around 25 years old when Morse went into production in 1987, making it a classic even then. Here at Lancaster, we started life at around the same time, and we would have considered it an honour to talk classic car insurance with the illustrious TV detective.

Range Rover

On its introduction in 1970, it was plain to see that Land Rover’s new flagship Range Rover was going to make waves in all sorts of ways. Most obviously, it gave birth to the concept of the luxury off-roader, the stylish SUV which has so many imitators to this day. Take a look at Britain’s SUV/crossover-filled roads today, and you could argue that the Range Rover’s legacy has never been stronger.

From the car’s early days, British police forces wanted a slice of the Range Rover action. This was a vehicle that could, with conspicuous ease, do everything demanded of it by a law-enforcement officer: the 3.5-litre V8 engine gave seriously quick acceleration and great high-speed cruising, and the roomy, tall boot could swallow all the emergency signs and traffic cones that motorway cops needed. And, if you ever had to pursue a criminal off the road and into some fields, the Rangie was the vehicle you’d want to do it in.

Ford Escort

Affordable, reliable, and with decent performance, the Escort was a popular police car across its six generations. Interestingly, Merseyside Police opted for the fast RS2000 version of the 1970s Mk2 Escort, a car that notched up a fair few race and rally wins – meaning that your getaway chances were probably that little bit slimmer across Merseyside than anywhere else at the time. Previously, Liverpool & Bootle Constabulary had also ordered a consignment of the Mk1’s own ‘hot’ version, the Mexico.

These were the exceptions, though: more often, the Escort was acquired by the police in strictly standard guise, where it did sterling service as a neighbourhood ‘panda’ car. There were even van versions, favoured by the cops for dog handling or crime scene duties.

Ford Granada Mk1 / Ford Consul

Ford’s premium saloon (and later hatchback) was a popular British police car across all three of its generations, but the first generation arguably has the biggest claim to TV-based immortality.

Launched in 1972, that first-gen Granada was seen at its best in the gritty police drama The Sweeney, which starred John Thaw and Dennis Waterman as a pair of rugged, maverick Flying Squad detectives. Their vehicle of choice was a Mk1 Granada – or to be more accurate, a Consul GT. This near-identical sister model was in fact slightly less well-specced – and, as a consequence, around 50kg lighter, making it a nimbler pursuit car.

Check out this wonderful sequence from 1978, featuring Thaw and Waterman’s Consul chasing a Renault 16 around the mean streets of West London. We have to say that on this evidence, the Consul takes corners considerably better than its French counterpart.

Rover SD1

From 1963 to 1999, Rover produced a quartet of fast, boldly styled executive saloons: the sharp, assertive P6 (winner of the first European Car of the Year award); the unmistakable, Ferrari Daytona-inspired SD1; the more traditionally good-looking 800; and, finally, the handsome 75, now a bolted-down modern classic.

Of these, the SD1 is perhaps most vividly remembered in police livery. It certainly owes some of its popularity to its predecessor: the P6 was the first Rover to get the 3.5-litre V8 engine, which also graced the Range Rover (see above) and proved a mightily effective motorway mile-muncher.

When the SD1 emerged in 1976, it retained (in top-spec guises at least) that excellent engine… and added a whole heap of practicality including that wide-opening hatchback tailgate. Yes, the car that famously represented ‘Tomorrow. Today’ was taken up by the Metropolitan Police Force within its first year of availability.

The first SD1s to see police duty were neighbourhood-patrolling ‘area cars’, bearing the traditional blue livery. By the end of the 1970s, however, the big, quick Rovers were emerging in white with the soon-to-be-iconic ‘jam sandwich’ stripe midway down the sides. By this time, the smaller-engined 2600 would be doing area work, while the big 3500 would do service in the Traffic divisions, where its greater power and acceleration would prove indispensable.

If you were speeding or making a getaway on Britain’s motorways in the late 1970s and 1980s, the sight of a ‘jam sandwich’ SD1 in your rear-view mirror would surely signal that the game was up.

Ford Granada Mk3

The Mk1 Granada/Consul may have got the screen fame, but its next two generations also put in many thousands of hours of police work. Big, fast and comfortable, these were ideal motorway patrol cars: the Mk3 of 1985-1994 was an especially prized commodity among Britain’s police forces, with its hatchback boot giving it a huge load-carrying capacity, perfect for carrying all the kit that goes with motorway patrol work.

It could also shift, too, with the 2.8-litre V6 engines in particular able to keep up with most motorway speed demons. Lastly, the Mk3 Granada was also a pretty reliable car, a fact much appreciated by police forces who gave it some long and punishing shifts. We’ve got it pegged down as one of the next generation of modern classics – owners of these stylish, reliable saloons should sort out some classic car insurance in short order.

Vauxhall Carlton / Omega

As we noted in the introduction, the various UK police forces have tended to favour British-built cars, meaning that Ford, Vauxhall and British Leyland all managed a sizeable market share.

Vauxhall’s upmarket large saloons of the 1980s and 1990s were popular choices with UK forces, both in police uniform and as covert traffic surveillance vehicles.

The Omega, in particular, was taken up in huge numbers by British police forces during its production run from 1994-2003, its V6 variants proving particularly capable at chasing miscreants up and down the motorway network or along the nation’s twisty B roads.

Cop a fair deal at Lancaster

The police cars on this list would have been worked hard during their lifetimes. Nowadays, though, we’d imagine that any that are still around have been lovingly restored – and don’t see quite as much action as they did in police uniform!

We’d love to help you look after your classic, and our 35 years’ experience in the classic car insurance business means we’re well equipped to do so.

Contact us for a classic car insurance quote today.

Policy benefits, features and discounts offered may very between insurance schemes or cover selected and are subject to underwriting criteria. Information contained within this article is accurate at the time of publishing but may be subject to change.