OT - London Taxis

[JohnP]

Don't know why it came into my head - but I recall at one time London Taxis had an open luggage space on the nearside front. Was this in response to a ruling - or what is a whim of a maker?

[Andy Bennet]

Until the late 1950s, vehicles licensed as London taxis were required to be provided with an open-access luggage platform in place of the front passenger seat found on other passenger cars (including taxis licensed for use in other British cities).

[Andy Burns]

I thought it was for the bale of hay :-P

[Dave Plowman (News]

All sorts of odd regs. For example, the driver's door couldn't be locked. Perhaps to discourage street parking?

I'd wondered if it was to discourage it being used as a private car when off duty?

But it does provide luggage space on a smaller vehicle than one with a boot, if you don't allow a passenger alongside the driver. So the servant went by bus. ;-)

[Andy Bennet]

That was hung underneath :-P :-P

[Dave Plowman (News]

Think it was a requirement it fitted in the boot in later versions.

[Adrian Caspersz]

On 21/02/2021 09:56, Andy Bennet wrote: (including taxis licensed

I once took a sorry looking beat-up London black taxi in Belfast.

The owner hadn't even removed labelling and ads inside from it's previous life on London streets!

[Dave Plowman (News]

Usually by the time they're sold off from use in London, they're well clapped out.

[Jimmy Stewart ...]

used right up into the 60's...very cool

[tim...]

presumably the logic behind it is that many people would be travelling with a trunk

which wouldn't otherwise fit anywhere else in the cab

[JNugent]

There is a legal requirement for a luggage space on the nearside, at the front, opposite the driver.

There has never been a requirement for it to be open to the weather, and as it happens, the last cab which had a luggage space open to the elements was sold and licenced in 1959 in the form of the Austin FX3, replaced that same year by the four-door FX4.

The luggage space is still there, of course, but for the last sixty two years (or so), behind a door.

The boot doesn't have much luggage space at all - it's really only there for the spare wheel and associated paraphernalia and any private possessions of the driver.

[JNugent]

London cabs tend to do 50,000 a year (or more) if double-shifted and can be licenced for a continuous period of eleven years in normal circumstances. Yes, that tends to knock the stuffing out of them, even with all the maintenance and and care and attention they get.

But not all garages keep them for the full eleven years and many are sold s/h well short of that age, mainly for use in other British cities, as you say.

[JNugent]

Almost!

The law until late 1975 or early 1976 (when the Home Office relaxed it) was that only the driver's door (plus the front luggage door on an FX4 or similar) could be lockable.

It was the passenger (ie, rear) doors which were not allowed to be fitted with locks.

A cab certainly could be left reasonably secure, whether in the street or elsewhere.

Whisper it, but there were ways of locking the rear (passenger) doors at night.

An oddity was that the driver's door could not be locked from outside with a key. The driver had to lock that door from inside, then climb over the dividing panel between his seat and the luggage space, exiting the cab through the luggage door, which was the only one with a key lock.

Some localities (Blackpool comes to mind) did allow the FX4 to carry six passengers, with an extra seat fixed into the space designed for luggage (it also obviously had to have a seat belt provided because the law then was that they had to be fitted in all front seats).

[JNugent]

FX3... last seen working in London around 1970.

[JNugent]

With the boot being hinged at the bottom (and strongly reinforced and fitted with very robust cable stays), it was possible to carry luggage in the boot (with the lid open).

[Jimmy Stewart ...]

cool

[charles]

That's how we went of holiday in my mother's 1936 Wolseley in the 1940s.

[fred]

Just like the original Mini where the number plate folded down to reman visible

[Tim Lamb]

In message [e-mail]>, charles [e-mail]> writes

My father had an old Wolseley 18 in the '50's. Ran a big end trying to overtake something on the A1:-)

>

[Andrew]

Porlock Hill used to be the death of many cars back in the

1950's