Buying a taxi cab
Fancy breaking rank from the usual herd of MPVS? Craig Cheetham gives you all the knowledge you need when it comes to flagging down one of the best people carriers ever made.
A quirky alternative to an SUV.
Big people carriers are useful things, but with the odd notable exception – Fiat Multipla anyone? – they’re hardly characterful. Indeed, they’re very much the definition of function over form.
For some people that’s absolutely fine: it’s all they need. If a car is simply a means of ferrying themselves, the kids, the dogs and the rubbish from A to B, they can’t be beaten. But we can’t help but think the idea of an ordinary people carrier is, well, a bit hackneyed.
However, there’s one true multipurpose vehicle in plentiful supply on the used market right now that has character in spades – enough, in fact, to have once won it an international design award. It’s a British icon and, thanks to London’s latest round of air quality legislation, it’s one that has never been more affordable or is likely to ever be again.
The humble London Taxi is a six- or seven-seater (depending on whether or not it has a hideously uncomfortable jump seat alongside the driver in the front) with a passenger area that’s both vast and easy to keep clean, while in terms of its dimensions a cab is almost as big as a Ford Transit. It’s designed for people to be able to stand up in the back, so there’s plenty of room for the tip run, and it’s one of the few cars on the road that will happily swallow a couple of mountain bikes without you having to remove their wheels. We’ve even seen one that has been converted into a camper.
For years, the cab was an open secret. For the educated few it was an intelligent choice – and one that has celebrity endorsement. Prince Philip, Stephen Fry, Noel Edmonds, Bez from the Happy Mondays and former Blue Peter presenter Yvette Fielding are all among the celebs who’ve enjoyed both the practicality and anonymity of a black cab.
By far the most common used taxis on the market right now are London Taxis International (LTI) models. These were introduced in 1997 and built by the former Carbodies company in Coventry,
which later became Manganese Bronze Holdings and now, under the ownership of Chinese giant Geely, has reinvented itself as the London Electric Vehicle Company (LEVC) – an unusual name for a company whose global headquarters are five minutes away from Junction 2 of the M6 in the Midlands.
The cab was created under the supervision of industrial designer Kenneth Grange, who could also lay claim to such iconic examples of British transport infrastructure – the Intercity 125 diesel locomotive and the Adshel bus shelter. The TX1 was hailed (no pun intended) as a classic piece of urban design, enough to win it Millennium Product status from the Design Council in 1999 as one of the greatest designs of the 20th century.
Unsurprisingly, the vast majority of cabs were supplied new to London, though Birmingham, Manchester, Newcastle, Norwich, Peterborough and Glasgow are among the other big cities to run traditional Hackney carriages. Indeed, many of these are ‘second-life’ taxis originally leased to operators in the capital before passing into the hands of owner-operators in smaller cities.
However, recent legislative changes in London have led to a swarm of cabs being decommissioned. While they’re still perfectly legal for use in other towns and cities, supply currently exceeds demand. That means that you can get your hands on one of the most useful people carriers on the market for a piffling amount – after all, carrying people was the taxi’s first and foremost design function.