When Stephen Parsons takes his 1990 Mitsubishi V3000 car to the dairy he gets more than the odd comment.

Its black and white paint scheme, coat of arms, and blue and red light bar make it instantly recognisable as an old traffic cop car.

But it wasn’t always so.

When the Te Awamutu man first spied the car in mint condition on Trade Me belonging to “one lady owner” he snapped it up.

Back then, the car was in original condition with a light green paint finish.

Parsons set about transforming the car to replicate a Ministry of Transport Traffic Safety Service vehicle.

First, he took the car to a painter in Hamilton to get the exact black and white colour scheme – black bonnet and boot with white doors and roof.

“As a child I would buy (toy) cars and repaint them black and white. I was absolutely rapt with the colour scheme.

“I just really was a fan of the black and white colour scheme on any police car around the world, and I would go right out of my way on the way home from school in Papakura in the late 70s just to lean my bike on a tree and stare at the Ministry of Transport patrol cars outside the Papakura office.”

Parsons, a former 1980s police officer, always wanted to work for the Ministry of Transport but instead his father convinced him to go to Police College.

He sacrificed his love of the famous black and white cars for the blue and whites, but eventually, he left the police and began collecting related memorabilia.

The 60-year-old started off with firefighter helmets he was donated by a relative in 1987 and has built up a staggering collection of first responder keepsakes.

They include miniature and model cars, hats, helmets, uniforms, trophies, badges, patches and broaches, cups, photos, key rings and even movies, from the Ministry of Transport, police, fire, St John and the Navy.

Not only has he amassed a small fortune of collectible items, Parsons now owns the car, complete with flashing lights, an old ambulance siren, and even a perfectly matched Ministry of Transport coat of arms.

“I said to (my wife) five years ago, ‘I wanna do a Ministry of Transport patrol car’ and so the mission started.”

First, Parsons had to find the type of car used by the Ministry before road policing was amalgamated into the police in 1992.

He found the mechanically sound Mitsubishi V3000 light green sedan in Tauranga with one owner.

It was new in 1990 and had only done 93,000 kilometres.

“The first thing we did was went and got quotes to get it painted. Half way through the job (at PJ’s Panel and Paint in Hamilton) it was just fate…”

“They used to repair those back in the 80s when they would come in damaged from accidents and car chases, so the black and the white are the actual paint batches that were used by the Government in those days.”

Then Parsons set about finding a door emblem featuring the original Ministry of Transport (MoT) livery, which he took to a signwriting company in Hamilton to recreate.

He said the care taken by an employee to place the 3M adhesive sticker on the door and cut it to fit across the rub strip was amazing, and all for a princely sum of $69.

Next was the red and blue flashing light bar – an LP6000 made in the United States and used on all MoT cars.

Parsons put a picture of the lightbar on Facebook saying he was looking for one.

“I got a phone call and a guy said, ‘I’ve seen one of those on a shelf – it’s pretty rough in Lower Hutt – this is the guy’s number’.

“And I rung the guy and we sorted out a price and he sent it up to me but it was a mess, and it was in pieces.”

Parsons went to an auto-electrician friend in Hamilton and together they cleaned it up, put it together and hooked it up to the car – and it works.

Inside the car is the original blue velour upholstery seats, a working Hawk radar that detects the speed of oncoming motorists as well as the car’s own speed, and a speed lock.

There’s no radio so the motorola CB handset is just for show, but an old siren Parsons scored from a decommissioned ambulance sounds as if new.

In the back seat there’s old-style, unused breathalyser tests, white points duty gloves, his policeman’s briefcase, a high-vis vest, together with orange road cones, a police baton and other gear in the boot.

The cop car is highly popular at car shows and Christmas parades, Parsons said, and is constantly photographed wherever it goes.

“People recognise a bit of New Zealand history. This will have a little crowd around it because people say, ‘Oh I remember these’ and ‘I got stopped by one of these’ and they all have their stories about it.

“And then sometimes ‘cos it represents authority, even though it’s been long gone in this country, sometimes we get cars going the other way giving us the fingers.”

Once Parsons was asked to rent the car for a movie but declined. He thought the deal was dodgy.

The car is one of several in Waikato and around the country and sometimes the owners get together with their vehicles and reminisce.

And like many fastidious car owners, he doesn’t take it out in bad weather.

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