Background
As London clichés go, the Hackney carriage or ‘black cab’ is up there with red buses, post boxes and telephone booths, warm beer, inexplicable queues outside Madam Tussauds, avoiding eye contact on the Tube, and soldiers wearing mahoosive furry hats that make them look a little like Amy Winehouse.
The black cab says London like the yellow cab says New York, and no cabs whatsoever say trying to get home from Oxford after 10pm (sorry - it’s a sore point).
It is an enduring symbol; a totem for a city, a history and a people; an instantly recognisable and universally understood signifier of a specific place and culture.
‘Hackney coachmen’ were first licensed in 1637, and the first carriages that dispensed with the need for a horse were, in fact, electric and introduced in 1897.
It has long been decreed that all London taxis must have a turning circle no bigger than 8.535 m (28 ft). The charming reason given for this idiosyncratic stipulation is that cabs should be capable of negotiating the Savoy Hotel’s entrance roundabout without resorting to an undignified three-point turn.
Whimsy and anecdote aside, what we have here for you today is a 2017 London Taxis International TX4 by Kahn.
Only five were made and, when new, they cost £150,000 each.
Yes, you read that right.
Here’s why...
