warren t claim

The 406 was the only car more popular as a taxi in my area than the mid sized Ford. Despite this, when the 407 was introduced it found very few fans and everyone migrated to the Mk3 Mondeo.

I'm flattered! I can't say I've seen said driver around for at least ten years. The 406 is/was a very good looking car. The Pug diesel XUD was a better and more economical unit than the Ford diesel. The 406 does have better seats, as I said a little earlier you have to go up as high as GLX spec in the Mk2 Mondeo to get soft seat fabric. The bits that you touch in the 406 seem nicer than in the Mondeo, it feels like a much more substantial car.

I had a few that colour. One 2.0 Ghia X springs to mind. The one I've written about in the last two paragraphs of this post. I used to offer what we in the trade call a "Settle Buys". A deal done between two drivers or a driver and a fleet owner where the buyer puts down a deposit and pays weekly rental payments until the vehicle is paid for. I did offer to rent the cab but he'd rather sell it for cash or on the weekly. I refer the settle buy option because if I was only renting it there's nothing stopping him selling the cab to someone else with a weeks notice and leaving me without a job again. As well as renting out private hire cars back in the mid 2000s, I also used to offer settle buys. A driver could either rent a Mk2 Mondeo from me at £80 a week or buy one from me at £100 a week. The ones I sold were usually the better examples of Mk2 Mondeos, meaning the rentals were bought in as a Cat C and the settle buys were Cat D. I generally tried to sell cars for less than £4000 so they'd be paid for in much less than a year as I didn't want an argument if it failed its next plate MOT. Warranties were usually only for a month as a driver could hand the car back at any time, even after a month. What I, and a few other fleet owners offered, was the option for the driver buying the car to bring it to the garage I used to have any major malfunctions fixed with no immidiate cost, I'd just put the cost of the replacement clutch, gearbox, injector pump as extra weekly payments of £100 at the end of the finance agreement. This usually worked out that the driver ended up paying maybe £4800, or 48 payments of £100 for his Mondeo. The profit on charging full retail on the parts and labour I'd split with my mechanic. Unlike the rental cars on my fleet, things like tyres and servicing were not included in the weekly payment although I'd happily put a £70 service on the end of the bill for £100. Every car I sold on the weekly would be sent out with a new cambelt, decent tyres and freshly serviced. If a car was returned within a month, something that only happened once, I'd advertise it out again as a settle buy. Any car handed back to be after that went straight onto my rental fleet. I generally stuck to Mk2 Mondeos for several good reasons. Firstly they were a cheap fix both mechanically and to get them hammered straight in the first place. Secondly, I always had a crashed or dead example to rip apart for parts. I always made a habit of buying Mondeos no older than five and a bit years old so I had the time to get them pulled straight and plated before their sixth birthday meaning that they'd be young enough to get a 12 month plate on because my council insists on retesting a PH car twice a year when it reaches 6 years old. At the same time I was selling Mondeo Mk2s on the weekly another, larger, operation was doing something similar but selling the super desireable at the time Peugeot 406. Although admittedly his 406s were a couple of years newer than my Mondeos, he had no shortage of punters chomping at the bit to grab themselves a piece of repaired Cat C 406 action for the eye watering price of £10k. FFS! That's well over two years repayments after repairs. Come to think of it, that's £10 grand for a Cat C 406 with DHSS spec, clock instead of a rev counter in that shitty solid green colour. Any Mondeo Aspen I bought went straight to rental and the driver would always want first refusal on the next LX or GLX I had available. One interesting point to ponder is that it didn't matter if the Mondeo I was selling was a hatch or a saloon, they both sold and rented out just as easily. Another fact that's only just occured to me twenty years down the line is that out of the dozens of Mk1/2 Mondeos that passed through my hands I honestly don't think any of them were estates. I can't think why this is. I had one driver who totally refused to buy a car on the weekly from me and insisting on renting despite me telling him it was dead money. He'd been with me nearly two years and as my longest serving driver he'd managed to work his way up to the top of the food chain on my rental fleet finding himself driving a Mk2 Ghia X manual hatch with full leather in metallic grey. He'd recently swapped to this Ghia X from a GLX 1.8 diesel hatch because he had his own operators licence and did airport transfers like a Poundland NorfolkNWeigh and was happy to have a 2.0 petrol over the diesel fitted in his GLX as the Ghia X had cruise contorl fitted, a feature unavailable on any Mk1/2 Mondeo. It came as no surprise that he didn't really have to pay any fuel penalty as the 1.8 Endura D diesel lump wasn't the most economical oil burner at motorway speeds. The problem started when this lad took one Manchester Airport job too many and fell asleep on the M56 whilst driving to pick up one of his clients. He woke up after the Mondeo hit the central reservation causing him to spin accross all three lanes before coming to a halt sideways covering lanes 1 and 2. He was only insured third party, as almost all drivers were back then, which happily paid out for several yards of Armco but left me with a pretty big bill for a Mondeo that was way beyond repair. When I chased him for the money he started to whinge stating that he'd given me something like £6000 over the last year or so which more than covers what I paid for the car. Now that's sort of true but he'd not had the Ghia X more than a couple of months. If he'd have bought the first car I rented to him off me on the weekly, a Mk2 1.8 petrol LX in Panther Black IIRC. He would now not be looking at a huge bill to replace the Mondeo that at the time was the pride of my rental fleet. Eager to avoid a bare knuckle fist fight with a 20 stone 5'5" bloke who looks like he'll drop dead of a stroke at any moment now, I agreed to rent him a metallic dark green 2.0 LX automatic Mk2 Mondeo for £185 a week. £80 rental, £55 insurance and £50 to pay me on the weekly for the crashed Ghia X. After a few months I awoke to discover the Mondeo Mk2 parked outside my flat with the keys in my letterbox. I was expecting that to be honest but what really hurt was seeing him later that week driving a settle buy 406 from the other firm I mentioned earlier. I really couldn't be arsed chasing him for anymore money.

I suppose there's a difference between a car being small by size and small by name. That Fiesta is probably bigger inside than the many Pug 306s I worked as a taxi.

I'll buy you one as long as you promise to sign for it at customs and agree to take it home via a location of my choice.

Not unless I decide to get a Wolverhampton badge.

And I thought that working an MG6 as a taxi was hardcore!

Plenty of Berlingo type vans are restricted to 52/56 mph.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and beg to differ. Back in the 70s HGVs weren't speed limited or fitted with tachographs meaning that a driver could be joining a motorway with trucks travelling in lane 1 at maybe 65 mph.

Back in 2012 five of us were tasked to drive a quintet of Mercedes Econic bin wagons from Warrington to the OLympic village in London. The firm provided a Chevy Spark rental car to carry four hefty blokes (and one more hefty woman driver) back to Warrington. It was a really tight squeeze but both us and the car made it back.

Is there any modern car that's not up to a fast 200 mile motorway sprint? Back in 2007 I did Merseyside to Devon and back in a day driving a Chevy Matiz Enterprise rental car. I happily coped with being thrashed both ways.

As it says on the tin. I'm thinking that back in the 70s if you took a reps job at Grandad_Claim's company you were given a Mk3/4 2 door Cortina 1300 base (no, my family didn't own Thorn as featured in the Arena Cortina tv programme) and you'd be expected to keep it for three years and by then it'd clocked up between 60 and 75k. These pushrod powered four coggers never gave any mechanical trouble and were doubtlessly driven at 70 mph+ on motorways for many hours a week, or even day. I do understand that the UK has a lot more miles of motorway today compared to back then but in 2024 we have average speed cameras and plenty of stretches with limits as low as 50 mph. I suppose all cars made since 1960 have been expected to drive on motorways, but where would you draw the line as a daily driver? Lets assume that you will be driving 12000 miles pa and 2000 of those miles will be on a motorway.

Wolverhampton plated.

Didn't one belong to a bunch of nuns or am I dreaming that? Three major facelifts of one car really was flogging a dead horse.

Maybe in Europe they didn't have the tenths and used all the odo for whole KMs?

From a taxi point of view, the Mk1 was probably a nicer car to work than the Mk2. The Mk1 had nicer seat trim in sub GLX spec and came with a remote boot release. The Mk2 had better air vents though. The Mk1 had a handy cubby under the stereo that would nicely house a Tait two way radio meaning the driver didn't have to fuck about screwing a cage to the transmission tunnel which stole legroom. The Mk1 always seemed to have a better gearchange despite the slightly shorter lever.

Am I the only one here who thinks that the Mk1 looks better as a saloon but the Mk2 looks better as a hatchback?

For an old boy part exchanging his 1986 Sierra 1.6L a Mondeo LX would have had more than enough toys compared to what he's used to.

The bellend next door is our local "binfluencer". We all use him to remember which colour bin to put out that day.

Enfield Bullet as well I think?

I'm pretty sure that six figure odometers were introduced to standardise clusters across Europe as 60000 KMS is hardly a high mileage.

That's a high mileage for a petrol. The highest mileage petrol Mondeo taxi I had was only in the low 200Ks although I did have a couple of diesels with over 250K on the clock. I should add though that the only reason I disposed of those cars was due to the local council and their eight year limit for PH cars, not due to mechanical failure.

All 406s have twin armrests!