Читать книгу Cops and Robbers - Ant Anstead - Страница 35

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 he was more frightened by the drive in the Mini than he was about the stabbing itself!

The Hillman Imp proved almost as popular with the likes of Kent, Glasgow City, Somerset and Bath Constabulary, Norfolk Joint Police, Newcastle Police and the Dunbartonshire Police. The Somerset cars were somewhat different in that they ordered theirs in the standard Rootes blue, which was a little darker than the light blue that everyone else had adopted. Kent County Police didn’t bother painting the doors white on their early Hillman Imps, although they did eventually succumb to the full colour scheme. However, the prize for the ‘best-looking Imp in the panda class’ goes to the Dunbartonshire Police, who of course were not a million miles from where the Imp was manufactured in Linwood, Renfrewshire. Being canny Scots, they dreamt up a money saving idea to get themselves two pandas without the need for any special orders or additional paint jobs. The solution was to buy two cars – one white, the other one blue – then swap the doors, bonnet and boot lids over. Brilliant. But they did use some paint – bright yellow to be precise, on the roof. The roof colour was complemented by large ‘Wide Load’ signs placed front and rear. The cars were very high profile and gained the nicknames of Pinky and Perky; they were used to escort abnormal loads along the A82 Loch Lomondside Road from Dumbarton to Fort William during heavy construction work at Loch Awe and became tourist attractions in their own right. Although not strictly panda cars (they were actually Traffic cars), the livery alone makes their inclusion here a must. Incidentally, the diecast model manufacturer Corgi made a superb two-model set of Pinky and Perky, which you can occasionally pick up online.