No, not either of these types of panda.
No, I'm talking about the good old-fashioned Police Panda Car, originally black and white (hence the name) although the ones I remember were always turquoise and white. Some police forces would buy a white car and a turquiose car and simply swap over the doors to get something like this...>
Mind you, I always preferred the "Jam Buttie Cars"...
These were used for higher-speed work where the pandas stuck to towns. 
I typed "Jam Buttie Cars" into Google Images and as well as that rather excellent Triumph 2500, up came a picture of Norris from Coronation Street - my favourite Corrie character since Blanche died but probably not relevant to this post.Anyway, why am I rabbiting on about Police Cars?
Because of this article today from BBC News. It states that all UK Police Forces will now use the same livery and only buy vehicles from Ford, Vauxhall, Peugeot or Hyundai for panda-ish work. Then from Volvo, BMW and Audi for high-speed work and finally from "Jaguar, Iveco and VW should forces decide they need other types of vehicles including motorbikes, vans and armoured VIP saloons." This excludes the Japanese and the Italians so I guess there'll never now be a Fiat Panda Panda Car. With the exception of Hyundai, most of these vehicles will be built in the EU so that's a good thing and presumably, these manufacturers have done the best deals to get the sort of mass-volume sales national police vehicles will provide. so it's a win-win.
Well almost.
No Italian choices does prevent us seeing one of these on British roads...
I remember the Jam Butty cars but if you see early episodes of Z-cars all the patrol vehicles were black.
ReplyDeleteI wonder why they chose those manufacturers? Wouldn't Vauxhall, Toyota, Nissan and Honda with Jaguar for performance make more sense?