Every so often here some (mostly) jocular abuse is directed at car models that are popular with taxi drivers. Humph had had some for his Mercedes E, and a couple of types that have interested me - the Volvo S80 and the Skoda Superb - have attracted some too. I'm sure there are more examples.
And yet, aren't the qualities that make a good taxi very similar to those that make a good family car, especially for a family that makes long trips? After all, taxi drivers are no mugs - they want to be comfortable for a long day behind the wheel; they need space and comfort for their passengers and their luggage; and because many are self-employed owner-operators, they appreciate longevity and moderate maintenance costs.
I ride in a fair few taxis, mostly big saloons, and I've discussed their merits with the drivers. Turns out they look for much the same qualities as I do - so why do we stigmatize some cars as 'taxis'?
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I am surprised that no one has had a go at my Ceed, although I have not seen a Ceed taxi in the UK they are used by the police and as a taxi in many continental countries, often the estate SW model. The Hyundai i30 (same car) is used as a taxi in some parts of the UK.
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Because winding others up is fun, it fact it's the law in this house ! I don't really give a stuff what others actually think of my current car or any other ones I've had and to be honest some of the humour poked at it and the others made me smile.
There have been times in my life ( and almost certainly will be again ) when I couldn't have afforded a ride in a taxi never mind have a car suitable for the job. I'm just grateful to have the use of a nice car at the moment and remain realistic about the probability that that situation will change again at some point in the future.
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Stu is always going on about the Lancer as a taxi. I have never seen a lancer used as a taxi (except late at night outside london clubs when dodgy "taxis" come out of the woodwork)
The Touran was frequently mistaken for a taxi, even had some bloke climb in the back once.
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>> because many are self-employed owner-operators, they appreciate longevity and
>> moderate maintenance costs.
That is the key. It needs to be cheap to run and always on the road for service. A taxi parked in the service bay is costing you money.
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All the taxis I've been in have been 10 year old heaps. I assume the owners buy them cheap and get rid of them as soon as they become uneconomic to operate as a taxi. I would imagine their main concern is cheapness to buy rather than reliability.
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"All the taxis I've been in have been 10 year old heaps."
Where I live Taxis can only be a maximum of 5 years old (& have to be white).
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>> "All the taxis I've been in have been 10 year old heaps."
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>> Where I live Taxis can only be a maximum of 5 years old (& have
>> to be white).
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I was wrong to call them taxis. What I've been in are private hire vehicles. Different rules apply to the the two types of vehicle. tinyurl.com/74msl5r Beware, it's 94 pages long! I soon got bored and gave up.
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For it's worth, I used to know a guy who had a fairly big mini-cab firm up in the north of Scotland. He owned and ran about 40 cars with employed drivers. Lot of business up there with the distances involved and the high earners at the time from the oil and fishing industries.
I remember chatting to him once on the subject of how many miles he expected to get out of a car before it reached the end of its useful working life.
OK this was 10 or 15 years ago so cars were different then but still it's a clue as to what the pro's view might be.
He reckoned than the mainsteeam stuff, Fords, Nissans, Vws and the like were good for about half a million miles before the repair bills started to become too steamy or regular. On the other hand he claimed to regularly run the Mercs ( primarily E class diesels of the time ) up to a million miles and beyond without too many problems.
Kind of puts a perspective on what most of us would regard as a high mileage car though doesn't it when he would have thought of a 250k mile Mondeo for example as a car only half way through its working usefulness !
Last edited by: Humph D'Bout on Sat 10 Mar 12 at 14:41
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In a different note, I always wondered why typical Hackney carriages are not available as family cars.
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>> In a different note, I always wondered why typical Hackney carriages are not available as
>> family cars.
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They are, if you are prepared to pay the price for one. I believe Prince Phillip has owned and driven a black cab.
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Handy enough for bus lanes I guess. I rather like the story ( attributed to Michael Winner I believe ) who is alleged to have said something like - "You know the traffic systems in London aren't so bad, for only £60 you can drive your car in the bus lanes if you're in a hurry. It's a marvelous system really. "
:-)
Last edited by: Humph D'Bout on Sat 10 Mar 12 at 15:18
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Years ago in the "other place" I once made a comment in a thread that although my family in the UK would refer to the diesel Merc company car I had at the time as a "prestige" car, here in Germany most people would refer to it as a "taxi". This caused all sorts of soul searching in the thread from people who didn't seem to like their diesel Mercs being apparently so publicly degraded.
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>> In a different note, I always wondered why typical Hackney carriages are not available
>> as family cars.
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> They are, if you are prepared to pay the price for one. I believe Prince
> Phillip has owned and driven a black cab.
>
Indeed so - I understand Stephen Fry has one too.
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I tuned a Fern green FX4 with a petrol engine for a geezer in sowf lunden once, he let me take it to Margate with mummy and wifey on board one Sunday, it didn't do a lot for me TBH apart from the (then) high driving position.
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Iffy
36K would buy any number of vehicles a piece of handmade Chinese junk would be at the bottom of my list
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...36K would buy any number of vehicles a piece of handmade Chinese junk would be at the bottom of my list...
I wasn't seeking to endorse the product, merely answer Movi's question.
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Why they are so expensive?? Do they have something which other cars don't have or just a monopoly?
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They used to have a virtual monopoly, which is being challenged now by Mercedes Vitos (with rear-steering to comply with the regulations) in London. Apart from a good turning circle and the 'ability' to us bus lanes, I cannot think why on earth anyone would want to have one as a family car.
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The traditional london style taxi is a dreadful pile of poo, horrid to drive and horrid to be driven in.
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Toyota Avensis used to be the taxi of choice around here there were lots, now it's mixed bag of Vectra and Skoda & Toyota.
At £2.80 per mile and had no fare increase in the last 4 years at least i guess they can't afford new mercs as many now walk, plenty of taxi's parked up in car parks on a evening.
The Asian taxi driver i spoke to recently says buisness is poor through the week and moderate on weekends with short trips.
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>> At £2.80 per mile
Strewth, truck operators running at £1.25 to £1.50 a mile doing traction work with artics @ 8mpg and costing up to £80k for something normal, had no idea taxis were so expensive, can't remember the last time i used one and now i know why.
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>> The traditional london style taxi is a dreadful pile of poo, horrid to drive and horrid to be driven in.
Yup. FX3 must have sent many to an early grave, and early auto diesel FX4 gutless and rough.
But later turbodiesel generations can do 90 and have hydraulic disc brakes. They are evidently a bit better to drive. But suspension is still too stiff and the driver is shut in a box, although the punters have plenty of room if there aren't more than five of them.
People think they are built like tanks, and they are in a way. But I had a head-on with an elderly FX4 in a Skoda Estelle once, and to everyone's surprise the Skoda won.
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Hows this for a coincidence? This morning I posted that I had not seen a Ceed Taxi in the UK, this afternoon in St Andrews I saw a Ceed SW taxi.
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>> Why they are so expensive??
Small scale production?
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Small scale production? Nah - don't they assemble and ship loads of 'em overseas these days? Don't some Middle East countries & China use them as taxis too?
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>> Small scale production? Nah - don't they assemble and ship loads of 'em overseas these days?
Still small scale in comparison to mainstream cars. There are 30,000 taxis up to 15 years old on the road in London - that's about the same as the number of Ford Fiestas registered in the UK in 3 months.
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I had a similar conversation with a Hong Kong taxi driver a while back. Typically they use LPG Toyota Crown Comforts - basically a 1980s design still available today and used in Tokyo - RWD, leaf springs with a modern Toyota 2.0l Twin Cam engine.
These cars average 150,000Km a year (not bad in such a small geography), are serviced by a network of back-street garages every 20 days or so and go through 2 sets of tyres a year. There is clearly an industry around this with re-upholstered seats being commonplace. Many have obviously had crash repairs undertaken - probably numerous times and paint over spray is de rigueur.
They are rented from the owner by the drivers as a taxi licence costs GBP500K and are generally run to 1,500,000Km and 10 years old.
Whilst they do get fairly rattly (due to add-on dashboard trinkets), I think it speaks volumes for Toyota.
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Just spent a week in Germany, and went in about a dozen taxis. Mixture of Merc E Class, Passats and Tourans. All absolutely immaculate inside and out, despite their less than fetching hearing-aid beige paintwork and in one case, 300000ks on the clock. All the VWs were DSG equipped which suggests these boxes are pretty long lived, and it never fails to impress me how quick and smooth the changes are.
The drivers themselves are something else though. inventive in the extreme at squeezing every last cent out of the meter :-)
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A couple of years ago I was in a taxi in Zug in Switzerland. It was a W126 S-Class, the 1980s one, and the clock was showing 200,000km. According to the driver it had been once round the clock, i.e. 1.2 million km.
It had the 6 cylinder 3 litre petrol engine running petrol not LPG - I was tempted to ask whether that explained the frankly outrageous prices of taxis in Switzerland.
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>> According to the driver it had been once round the clock, i.e. 1.2 million km.
It doesn't sound so dramatic when it's quoted in real (!) mileage ~ 746,000 miles.
P.S. Do continentals talk about kilometreage?
Last edited by: L'escargot on Sun 11 Mar 12 at 09:46
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>> P.S. Do continentals talk about kilometreage?
In German it's "Kilometerzahl" (Kilometer number) or "Laufleistung" (distance travelled). In Canada I came across "Kilometrage", though this may have been literal usage from the French language.
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'Kilométrage' occurs in French French too.
Last edited by: WillDeBeest on Sun 11 Mar 12 at 11:55
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Taxi stigma: unfair? - Old Navy
