Workshop at Police Headquarters, Friars Terrace, Stafford

Move your pointing device over the image to zoom to detail. If using a mouse click on the image to toggle zoom.
When in zoom mode use + or - keys to adjust level of image zoom.

Date:1971

Description:Terry Godridge and Eric Powell checking over an engine in the garage at the Police Headquarters on Friars Terrace, Stafford. Behind them are two Jaguar MkII 3.8 patrol cars.

The police car on the left, with the white registration plate, is TRF 322G, one of a series of seven owned by Staffordshire and Stoke on Trent Constabulary mainly used for the M6 Motorway. This photograph of TRF 322G –and the other cars TRF 316G – TRF 321G were also photographed when new in 1969 outside the Police HQ in the snow. The reason they were pictured was they had been fitted with what was then the best available in high visibility markings – that’s the huge roof sign and a red boot. The different colour of the boot can be seen on the second car in the photograph.

The new livery followed on from the death of an officer, PC Clive Blackburn in 1967. The Motorways were beset with fog and until the mid 1960’s had no speed limit so more needed to be done to make police cars visible.

The car on the right is JRE 999E – bought in 1967 as the official transport for the Chief Constable. The date of this photograph is 1971, it is likely that JRE had been given a second lease of life as a patrol car, re-liveried in the new scheme and been replaced as the Chief’s transport by a new XJ6.

JRE is a 3.8 litre car – while TRF 322G is actually a “240” model. Jaguar refreshed the Mk 2 in 1967 as the car was by that time 8 years old, and fitted slimmer bumpers among other refinements (as much to keep costs down as anything else). The revised models were called “240” (2.4 litre) and “340” (3.4 litre) – but in 1968 Jaguar deleted the 340 from the range, only supplying the 240 model as part of a rationalisation of their range before the XJ6 was launched. However, Staffordshire Constabulary were able to specify 3.4 litre engines in their 240’s – along with several other police forces, as the 2.4 litre engine was considered under-powered for Police work.

Research by Stuart Exelby

Share:


Donor ref:TG34 (66/13926)

Source: Mr T Godridge

Copyright information: Copyrights to all resources are retained by the individual rights holders. They have kindly made their collections available for non-commercial private study & educational use. Re-distribution of resources in any form is only permitted subject to strict adherence to the usage guidelines.