Leicestershire & Rutland Ex-Police Traveller

Dave Thomas is the proud owner of a WRY 865J, a 1971 Morris Minor Traveller finished in police specification Bermuda Blue and Police White. Despite buying the car under the assumption it was genuine ex-police, he had no concrete evidence to back this up. 

And so began months of research for Dave, on a mission to hunt down his car's history. What he had to begin with was very little; an MoT certificate dated 1976, carried out in a test centre in Shrewsbury and a handwritten bill of sale from a previous owner dated 1977.

In my role as registrar of the Ex-Police Register, Dave has kept me up-to-date every step of the way as he completed his journey to learn more, so I'm aware first hand the lengths he has gone to to get the confirmation he needed that his car was ex-police.

In the May/June 2013 issue of Minor Matters, there is an article written by Lynda and Philip Skipper on their ex-West Midlands Police Traveller, LDA 233D. The article mentions one other known panda Traveller, and at the end, briefly mentions Dave's car which they only discovered while researching their article. Again, it is only suggested at this time that it may have been a police car, but there was no proof to confirm this.

Dave’s next port of call was to reach out to my colleagues and I at the British Motor Museum archive, to enquire whether we held records for his car. Unfortunately as is the case with late Travellers built at the Adderley Park factory (and also LCVs post-1964), there are no surviving factory records from this time due to a factory fire destroying them. You can tell a late Traveller was built at Adderley Park because the chassis number will have an ‘F’ suffix, rather than the ‘M’ used by Cowley.

Another step in Dave’s search was to contact the DVLA to enquire whether there was any indication the original owner could have been Leicestershire Police. As expected, this was unfortunately a dead end, as they could provide no evidence of this.

Paul Stokes, owner of an ex-police Maestro van and general police car enthusiast, spoke to Dave about WRY 865J and confirmed it was a genuine Leicestershire and Rutland Police car, previously owned by a friend of his around 2007. He even remembers having driven it back then too. From what Dave knows of past owners, he’s succeeded in piecing together five previous owners of the car, including the second registered keeper. But alas, still nothing on the crucial first owner!  

Things began to look up when Dave spoke to Leicester Police. While they don’t officially hold records that far back, they were able to share photos of cars from their force in the 1960s that were part of a display on the wall in their current station. These were still unfortunately not the batch of Morris Minor Travellers that Dave’s fell into, being a later 1971 ‘J’ reg, however they did hold a similar ‘NRY’ registration prefix, meaning they had the same issuing authority of Leicester. These cars were 1968 ‘F’ suffix registration cars.

In my personal research, I had already come across these two photographs from 1968, and noted they have the same appearance as Dave’s car, including the police white stripe across part of the roof. The unit beat cars photographed were panda patrol cars that saw action at Coalville, Hinkley and Melton.

Finding a photo of another Traveller with a registration mark only six digits away from his, while on active duty back in the day was a great surprise for Dave too. WRY 871J would have been delivered to Leicestershire & Rutland Police in the same batch as his car.

Both Dave and I had the same idea to consult the DVLA vehicle enquiry checker online to search cars with consecutive registration numbers either side of WRY 865J. We were able to get a rough estimate that the batch might have run between registrations WRY 853J and WRY 878J, as there were a small number of Morris Minors in either grey or blue. However with many no longer having details on the system, this number could not be confirmed.

Things were starting to look up, with the chance of it having served in the police almost a sure thing, when Dave came across evidence of another ex-police Traveller existing, this one with the registration mark WRY 388J, with photos taken around 2022. 

All of Dave’s hard work and perseverance came to a head in December 2025, after contacting Leicestershire Council. And as luck would have it, they still held the original taxation record book from the era, showing where cars were first taxed. They explained this was simply an exercise book with handwritten entries (sounds very similar to some of the factory records we hold in the BMIHT archive!)

The particular book in question was titled ‘Leicestershire & Rutland Police’ and while it doesn't have marques or models of cars recorded, it did have a full list of registration marks. It was confirmed that the entry for WRY 854J, dated 5 November 1971 has an arrow pointing down the page until it reached WRY 871J, on 2 February 1972. Of course Dave’s car falls into this range, and the date recorded against WRY 865J is 26 January 1972. 

© Leicestershire Council

Referring back to the DVLA vehicle check, we now know from Leicestershire Council that this was a batch of 18 (although there would have been some issued earlier, as WRY 388J is from an earlier batch). Out of those 18, with the exception of Dave’s, 8 have no details listed, and 9 have been untaxed since the 1980s. The last of these 18 cars WRY 871J is the car photographed in the period photo.

As for Dave’s car currently, it’s been undergoing restoration and is presently without its wood until Dave is able to find the time to fit the replacement wood kit. Unfortunately progress has been delayed due to the car being in storage, but it will hopefully see the road again in the not too distant future. In the meantime if anyone has any further information about Dave’s car, please get in touch with the Ex-Police Register.

Minor Matters | May / June 2026