When you called the police in Germany between the wars, boy, did you get police! Imagine one of these beauties pulling up outside to take a report of your milk bottles being nicked! This is a 1928 Magirus MM transporter (click on the picture to see it in greater detail).
I pity the officers travelling in the trailer of this 1926 MAN transporter – it must’ve been a bumpy ride.
These would be terrific units in an interwar game, if any miniature company ever made anything like them. Or even in a Very British Civil War game, as a German polizei unit brought over to help their British police colleagues.
Note how the shakos worn by the officers are very similar to those worn by jaegers during the Franco-Prussian and Great Wars. These distinctive hats were worn by German police during WW2, and right up to the 1960s.
I’ve got a few old books I’ve got about the German police vehicles. The book these particular pics came from is called Polizei-Fahrzeuge gestern und heute by Klaus-Fr Doenecke and Dirk Lemcke.
There are a few more oddities portrayed in these books. Lovers of old armoured cars and motorcycle combinations may be especially interested in them.
DRESSING THE LINES 
That is a great picture and I hope someone makes a 25mm version of it.
That would indeed be cool. Not sure in terms of wargaming it would be a winner … but as a model it sure would be cool.
Only the Germans could make that look like an efficient form of transportation – just brilliant.
I’m told that this vehicle is equivalent of the old UK ‘charabanc’, famed transport of the British masses to the seaside.
Wow, that would be one way of transporting my Prussians across the table top, just needs a Steam boiler somewhere, maybe an HMG mounted on top of the cab… 😉
True, Scott. But wait till you see some of the other old German polizei contraptions in my books …