Читать книгу Cops and Robbers - Ant Anstead - Страница 36

In 1971 Northumberland Constabulary made a drastic error in buying a number of light-blue-coloured Hillman Imp saloon cars to be used in all areas as panda cars. Four burly giant police officers shoehorned into these tiny cars was always going to be a challenge, but the real challenge came whenever the police needed to make a stealthy approach to the scene of a crime. The Hillman Imp’s aluminium, rear-mounted engine (which had its design roots from a Coventry Climax Fire Pump engine) made a distinctive high-pitched whine. Thieves could place lookouts keeping toot, who could hear police cars approaching from afar and make good their escape. The only thing that officers could do to overcome this was to try to approach the scene of crime from an uphill direction, so that they could freewheel to the scene of crime to surprise offenders and catch them red-handed.

Birmingham City Police appear to have been the only force to have used the Austin A40 Farina for its panda car fleet, purchasing dozens of them in 1967 from the local Longbridge car plant. This was a move obviously designed to help with local community relations, as well as to clear some stock at Longbridge of what was by then an out-of-date car coming to the end of its life, thus it was probably available at a heavily discounted price. These cars were fitted with an illuminated roof box and a blue light together with two-tone horns. This was an unusual practice, although not unique. Some forces fitted their panda cars with emergency equipment to assist them in getting to an incident quicker, even though the drivers of such cars had only ever received basic driver training.

By the late 1960s and early 1970s a lot of our city and borough forces had amalgamated into the larger county forces, and at about the same time a variety of new panda cars came on stream, including the replacement for the Morris Minor: another Alec Issigonis masterpiece – the Austin 1100. The Met bought loads of them and they were just as popular with West Midlands, Gloucestershire and the new Devon and Cornwall Constabulary. The 1100 had plenty of interior space and its ride was very smooth thanks to its hydrolastic suspension, but it faced some serious opposition from Ford’s replacement for the Anglia 105E: the all-new Mk1 Ford Escort 1100.

Introduced in 1968, the Mk1 Ford Escort 1100 was an instant success with the public and the police. It was cheap to buy and run, had decent performance and enough space inside. It proved itself to be extremely reliable and cost-effective and officers enjoyed driving them. Forces like Dorset, Merseyside, Hampshire, West Sussex, Lancashire, Suffolk, Wiltshire, Thames Valley, Stirling and Clackmannan Police all used this new Ford product, and most stuck with it when it was later replaced by the Mk2.