In our next dive into the die-cast model cars collection, I am going to be looking at a pair of cars with a common theme between them; that theme, the police.
Firstly we have the 5 door Range Rover Classic from the West Midlands Police, more specifically the Central Motorway Police Group (CMPG). The livery is quite accurate to the real counterpart, however there are two glaring errors. Before I go onto the errors though I would like to point out the numbers and letters on the roof of the car. This is code created by the force so that aerial units can identify the ground units. In our case there is a red circle which generally means traffic or general response unit.
Now the errors, one of which may be arguable, but one not so. The arguable point is that, during my research I could never find this particular car in this model. I did however find this EXACT livery on a P38A, the model that came after this one. Perhaps there is no documented existence of this car, perhaps you need special access to find this out. The only shred of evidence I have is that Corgi made this model and with it was a card that read:
“1972-1997. 25th anniversary of West Midlands Motorway Network and Motorway Police (C.M.P.G) Featured Range Rover is the last of its style to be take into use by the Central Motorway Police Group.”
The second error is in the design of the car. The car is a fairly solid remake of the 5-door Classic, however the indicator lights struck me as quite odd when I first looked at it, because instead of the usual split of indicator and fog lights, there was just a singular red light. I researched for a good few hours and I could not find one example of a Range Rover Classic that had this design. So if it is by some miracle accurate, then this is a very rare car.
The second of the police vehicles is another 5 door Range Rover Classic this time from the Metropolitan Police. The livery on this model is not accurate and appears to based on a few different designs, and more noticeably those designs appear to be more later designs as the designs used on the Classics was very different. Funnily enough though, this model car has the same issue as the other one in that it has a singular red indicator not a split like we know the Classics had.
Despite the issues with the models, I think these two cars serve as important reminders of the importance that Land Rover and more specifically the Range Rover plays in British policing. 2 separate areas of the country and yet the same cars used. I also think that it is a testament to Land Rover because these are being used in jobs in which you need the best, in order to fulfil a public need.