NORTH WALES POLICE, 1978 MINI 850 VAN, BMA 766S, IN RESTORATION, PRESERVATION AND SERVICE.

The Mini; one of Britain’s best loved cars was also incredibly popular as a Police car in just about all its variants including saloon, estate, van, Clubman, Cooper and even the Moke. 

The cars got used for every Police purpose imaginable. In 1965 the Lancashire County Constabulary introduced a completely new concept with Unit Beat Policing whereby Police officers were assigned a number of beats to patrol and to facilitate them travelling to each beat they were given a distinctive blue and white car and the Panda Car was born. 

The scheme went nationwide and one of the most popular cars to use was the Mini 850 saloon. But Minis didn’t just get used as Panda cars. Others were used as General Purpose (GP cars) Traffic cars, Scenes of Crime vans, CID cars, Dog Section vans and even as motorway back-up vans to carry extra equipment to the scene of an RTA. 

Those forces that had larger countryside areas to Police tended to use the Mini van but painted in the blue and white colour scheme. The vans were a lot more versatile with their load areas being used to convey everything from prisoners to stolen property to dead deer. 

The Mini has to rate as one of the very best Police vehicles of all time and most coppers have fond memories of driving them.