WHY I BOUGHT A WOLSELEY

It all began with British cinema. More to the point, it began with the BBC and ITV re-screening films and programmes of a certain era. Let me explain...

As I was born in 1969, I am too young to have experienced the last of the London Metropolitan Police’s black Wolseley 6/110 Mk. IIs, as I believe that the Met was phasing them out of service in 1969/1970. Nor can I recall, closer to home, Hampshire Constabulary’s last-of-the-line white liveried Wolseleys they used into the early 1970s.  

But I do remember seeing the black Wolseley of Justice on our Ferguson set in the corner of our living room.

It could be a rather good made-for-television film, such as 1969’s Run a Crooked Mile, which ITV screened one afternoon. The late-night schedule might include one of Anglo-Amalgamated's 1960-1965 Edgar Wallace B-film series, with a 6/99 episode proving to a young John Thaw that crime does not pay. Alternatively, you might see a Wolseley gong Reginald Marsh’s Rover 2000 in the 1965 Scales of Justice second feature The Material Witness.

A production’s budget mattered less than how the director employed the Wolseley – prime examples being two 1967 horror films, The Sorcerers and The Quatermass and the Pit. A 6/99 or 6/110’s appearance could be fleeting, as in the Murdersville episode of The Avengers, or take part in an elaborate chase, as with Circus of Fear.  Admittedly, the latter features an Austin J4 as possibly the world’s worst getaway vehicle.

Circus of Fear also demonstrated that a film or a programme did not have to be of a superlative quality to have prime Wolseley moments. The Haunted House of Horror, which escaped into cinemas in 1969, was about as good as its title suggests. But at least there was a police 6/99 to distract from the unhappy sight of visibly tired and emotional Dennis Price as an unlikely Detective-Inspector. From the same year, the Anglo-French-American The Brain had David Niven’s moustache seeming to wilt in embarrassment, but the regulation ‘Swinging London’ scene featured a Wolseley following a police Jaguar S-Type.

In time, I came to appreciate how one 6/99, registration 716 TPD, enjoyed a more stellar career than many actors. From The Fast Lady, Murder at the Gallop, and Carry On Cabby to On the Beat, The Wrong Arm of the Law, Doctor in Distress, and You Must Be Joking, it was a Wolseley that maintained order from Pinewood to Elstree. Ace stunt driver Joe Wadham would ensure any miscreant could never evade the long arm of the law.

Such memories abided for years after I first saw these productions. Cinema history became my ‘other job’, with Wolseleys making several cameo appearances in my PhD thesis about post-war cinema. I bought my 1960 6/99 in London Met. Traffic Car spec in homage to so many productions of the past – and whenever the C-series engine is fired up, I mentally replay the Edgar Wallace ‘Man of Mystery’ theme tune.  

And I have to say that my Wolseley really does look as though it belongs to a film with the credit ‘Also Starring David Lodge and Richard Wattis’.