Evening Standard from London, Greater London, England • 99

Evening Standard Friday 14 June 2002 eswheels After 25 years of driving the Met is about to switch colours for its fleet of around 4000 vehicles Nick Gibbs discovers that the reason is less to do with visibility than economics Mini Cooper pi WAS Sir David McNee I I Metropolitan Police I I Commissioner during the I I silver jubilee year LI who introduced the famous police car livery in London Now as Her Majesty celebrates her golden jubilee the Met is ditching the colour scheme in favour of silver Local police cars and motorcycles will also make the colour change Forces such as Kent Police have already moved away from white cars and the reason is economic: we come to sell get more for a non-white vehicle White just an attractive colour to a lot of said Met fleet manager John Paddon research done suggests the public even notice the switch to silver in some cases" said Paddon will notice but the feedback had from Kent is good and been doing this for the past 12 months" If you get pulled over on the North Circular the colour of the police car is unlikely to be a priority Many of the incoming silver pursuit cars will be posher than their predecessors with diesel BMW 530d saloons taking over from petrol Vauxhall Omegas and Vectras Fuel consumption will rise from 23mpg for the 32 V6 Omega to 40mpg for the BMW but with no drop in performance get a very good price on it and certainly the Teutonic brands have very strong said Paddon TS back Four decades after the original began working its magic on motoring enthusiasts of all ages the Mini Cooper is heading for the showrooms again Though its dimensions have grown and the styling looks more chic than cheeky the remodelled icon still suffers from cramped accommodation has a less than supple ride and precious little space for luggage unless the rear-seat backrest is folded But who cares? With a supercharged motor shoe-homed under its bonnet this second-time around city car with attitude has all the urge it needs to get up and go to 62mph in only 74 seconds Keep pressing on and it will reach a speed almost double the UK limit but you'll need to take the car to a race track for that experience Times have changed since the original classic and classless Mini and so have prices Today's Cooper is costly for its size and you'll even have to pay extra for air conditioning But it is beautifully engineered and finished to the standard you'd expect from its parent company BMW Then there's the performance To say it goes well is an understatement: like its famous predecessor the is the kind of car that puts a smile into every mile low-slung and wide it has the quicksilver handling of a go-kart and whisks through cornen with incredible grip As 80 per cent of the engine's pulling power is on tap from only 2000 revs zipping through the six-speed gearbox is a delight and the whistling sound from the supercharger is entirely in keeping with the exhilaration the car provides Demand for the basic Mini and standard Cooper versions is so high that the company is now quoting a four-month wait for delivery With more than 4000 orders already placed for the which went on sale last week it seems the wait for the ultimate latter-day Mini is going to be even longer The way they were: Met Commissioner Sir John Stevens left with predecessor Sir David McNee and a 1950s Wolseley police car Police cars had been dark mat colours such as blue were favoured During the Seventies the force also bought large quantities of dull red Hillman Hunters and Avengers as vehicles ironically making them easier to spot as they cruised the capital: changed it into white with stripes to bring it into the same modern era as most other police said Sir David McNee Cars with his red-and-yellow stripes quickly earned the nickname (despite the fact that the red jam actually sandwiches the yellow bread) The jam sandwich stripes will remain with the silver cars although nowadays a strip of blue forms an outer crust The other big change in the police fleet is the phasing out of the Panda car There are now around 400 Ford Fiestas patrolling 32 London boroughs but Commissioner Sir John Stevens is keen to replace them with faster Vauxhall Astra IRVs (Incident Response Vehicles) which get the frill and sirens and lights treatment All will be silver IHE Met has a fleet of approximately 4000 I I vehicles 3000 and I I 1000 The 3000 LI includes 200 motorbikes which will also switch to silver and 500 vans which will stay white (unlike cars vans sell better in white) The link-up with BMW is one of the first major car deals with an obviously foreign manufacturer Previous suppliers have all been British including Rover and Jaguar while Met cars have included the incredibly fast Sunbeam Tiger roadster in 1966 However BMW has long been supplying coppers with motorbikes and the police vehicle museum near Hampton Court contains a perfectly preserved BMW RT80 from 1978 The German bikes replaced Triumph Bonnevilles on that the savings on ftiel for the diesel and the environmental benefits in reducing CO2 emissions it was an all-round Diesels have been criticised for their emissions but Paddon reckons not a huge problem: you look at a brand-new diesel the noxious emissions are higher than some vehicles but compared with older diesel vehicles running around chalk and BMW saloons have been used by some police forces since the Seventies and the City of London Police started using petrol 5 Series models back in the mid-Eighties The move comes as the Met brought together a selection of police cars of the last 25 years ranging from a 1948 Wolsely to a classic Rover 3500 and a Think electric car Before 1977 Metropolitan EtheirUmitedpursur they will not be as fast as petrol driven cah But! iooidngforsomething! is environmentally friendly! eanWe should be looking I tahhmmpfehesar leftists hive aboiwd--I turaed: the Think wesawf tiprominenttagi IntothereM window night people! sneaking up on them in this cat says Sergeant Maureen Hayden pointing at one of the electric! Think ars run by the Met in the! gjmt £ndpktured jrtghti Built! tthe two-seaters produce no ilngine noise and ah heV for miles before theyneedj recharging Commissioner John Stevens is impressed despite! 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