[JamesPB]

Taking this thread back to vehicles, I can thoroughly recommend the book "Polce Cars" by Malcolm Bobbitt from Sutton Publishing ISBN 0-7509-9402-9.

It's not one of those dry historical books about police transportation with just a couple of pictures. It's full of photos and drawings charting the development of police vehicles in the UK from the 1890s onwards. Two thirds of the book deal with the post-war period up to 2001 when the book was written.
And on page 134 is an actual vehicle I drove on several occasions, Leyland DAF Sherpa registration D714 FYH, which I drove in its guise as Station Van BC2 (Bravo Charlie = Chelsea Police district as was before it amalgamated with Kensington to become BS....yea, yea, I know, we got plenty of stick for that stn code). In this photo though probably in use as DD2 (Paddington)
Loads of photos of Area Cars, Carriers and Response Cars from all over the UK.

And for the afficionados on pages 130 and 131 you can compare and contrast two early SD1s: a Met Rover SD1 Area Car (in this case Alpha 1) with a Met Rover SD1 TD car (Traffic Division). The only differences I remember were that the TD SD1s had 2 blues and police signs on bonnet & boot. The later TD SD1s were the
V8 3500. While we were still using the 2600 as Area Cars.