header

AngliasaloonEstateVanPick UpTorinoConvertibleKit CarsSpecials
AdvertsArticlesBooksBuyingForgottenHistoryLegalLinksMisc
ModelsMoviesMy CarPhotosPoliceRacingHistoryStoriesTechnical

You are in:

Police


Also here are:

Adverts
Articles
Models

Ford Anglia 105E in the Police Force

Welcome to the Anglia Police Car part of the site. In this area of the site, you will find some
Adverts, Articles, Models and Photo's associated with the Ford Anglia as a Police Car.

Typical Panda Car

During the late 1950's early 1960's it became apparent that the "bobby on the beat" was becoming overstretched. The general population explosion meant that the area the local beat bobby had to cover was steadily increasing. This lead to more Police Forces looking at and starting to use local motorised patrol cars and so the 1960’s became the period that “Unit Policing” and “Panda Cars” were introduced.

Alan D Johnson (in his book - “British Police Cars of the 1950’s an 60’s) writes “A decision was made to take economical cars like the Ford Anglia and BMC Mini and give them a distinctive white band on both the front doors and the roof. As black was the first basic colour used they looked like Panda bears. For this reason we came up with the acronym “Patrol And Neighbourhood Deployment Area” Cars, although when Ford offered a substantial discount on their Anglia range we could only get them in pale blue and white."

Ford Panda Car

Unit Policing began in the Kirby area of Liverpool in 1965 using five Ford Anglia cars from the Ford plant at Halewood. Cheap to buy and economical to run, they were also found to be reliable and easy to manoeuvre, and so were considered ideal for testing in the newly designed Unit Policing role.

From these tests the Ford Anglia soon emerged as quite a capable local patrol car and became popular with a number of forces, who each ordered them in large quantities. In fact the Ford Anglia proved so popular as a “Panda Car” that Ford actually had them painted and fully finished to police specifications on their own production lines at Halewood.

Shown below are some of the Police Forces that used the Ford Anglia.

Ashfordly Police (Heartbeat)
Devon and Cornwall Constabulary
Dyfed Powys Police, Wales
East Riding Constabulary

Fife Constabulary
Hull City Police
Lancashire Constabulary
Liverpool and Bootle Constabulary
Metropolitan Police
Mid Anglia Constabulary
Rhodesia Police
Royal Ulster Constabulary
Sheffield City Police
St Helens Police
Victoria Police, NSW, Australia
Western Australia Police

Replica Police Anglia - AEL 603A

Top