It now has been 17 years since I started pushing a cab around London looking for fares and in that time I’ve probably driven most post-war taxis.
Even before I had qualified going to a trade exhibition at Islington’s Business Design Centre got me a test drive in one of those boxy Metros.
They always had trouble shifting those utilitarian boring beasts.

[W]hen I was first let loose on the streets of London my baptism of fire was an old – no very old – FX4. Registered in 1982 at a time when air conditioning was something an East Ender massaged into their hair, and without power steering, your arms would ache negotiating its two tonnes of steel around London with a penchant for swinging left unannounced when squeezing between tight gaps.

When the old girl gasped its last (well the drive to the meter broke) it was saying just let me die in peace, I’ve taken my last paying passenger.

A succession of Fairways followed some you couldn’t lock the doors, others that the only means of exiting the driver’s compartment was via the window and opening the door from the outside. One vehicle accumulated rainwater beneath the for hire sign to ensure the driver had a shower whenever he had occasion to brake heavily.

I’ve owned a more modern TX1, its shape unfairly likened to a blancmange, as with most of its siblings it had the ability to track down top secret transmissions. Perplexedly at certain ‘hot spots’ (outside the Langham Hotel is one of them), the central locking on the fob key would fail to work, occasioning a complicated procedure punching in PIN numbers to get the vehicle started again.

I should have headed this post ‘Tickled Pink’ but some enterprising cabbie has beaten me to that for recently I have been driving a pink cab in what must be the most photographed cab in London.

A neighbour, also a cabbie, declared that it matched my eyes, while I’ve received opprobrium from Aussies standing outside a local hostelry, “strewth mate!” I think was the refrain at the time.

My postman just had to knock to deliver a parcel which clearly fitted the letterbox, so he could voice his mirth at seeing ‘Pinky’ parked outside.

Ladies would choose my distinctive livery over my more conservative colleagues while many will strike up a conversation, rather a novelty for decades the fair sex have ignored my presence.

Henry Ford might have generated the quip:

any customer can have a car
painted any colour that he wants
so long as it’s black

He realised that drying paint took the longest of any step in the assembly line and had his factory switch to the fastest drying paint they could find, which, of course, was black. But I think old HF would be speechless at the sight of Pinky.

. . . and what’s not.

For years the London cab has been easily recognisable by tourists and residents alike, its design reminiscent of a more gentle age of old fashioned continuity and dependability – well sometimes.

It had its faults – Kamikazi steering which when confronted by a narrow gap would take it into its tiny brain to swerve without the intervention of the driver.

[T]he old FX eventually transmogrified into the imaginatively named TX series looking remarkably similar to its predecessor it was easily recognizable. Apart from the small number of Metro cabs on the street this vehicle has dominated the cab trade; with cabbies inevitably complaining that that there was no choice in which vehicle they drove.

Like London buses, you wait for one to come along and three arrive at once.

First was the Mercedes, looking like a van with windows apart from being – sometimes – painted black and an attempt to distinguish it from white van man, while it most certainly doesn’t resemble a London cab. For the driver it has been a revelation in driving, it feels as if you are behind the wheel of – well a Mercedes. Rear wheel steering manages to overcome the elusive 25ft turning circle required by TfL’s Condition of Fitness for taxis.

Next off the starting blocks is the Nissan NV200. Claiming to be the world’s taxi it has already beaten off competition to be New York’s official taxi of choice. Boasting much improved fuel consumption and a glazed roof from which passengers will be able to observe London’s leaden skies, it has Boris dancing a little jig as Nissan have promised to introduce an electric version by 2014 bringing his promise to introduce by 2020 an all electric taxi fleet closer to reality.

Now hot on the two pretenders’ heels a third cab comes along. Turkish car manufacturer Karsan (no doubt to be dubbed Karsi), has shown their electric Concept VI which appears to tick all the boxes. Right hand drive, zero emissions, 25ft turning circle and uniquely electronically operated wheelchair ramps which can be used on either side of the vehicle. But unlike the others, with the exception of the TX4, it was designed as a cab from scratch. This vehicle won New York’s popular vote for their taxi of the future.

Also in the pipeline is the Ford Transit Taxi and that will really make London’s cabbies White Van Men. Picture from Taxi Leaks.