1997 Fairway Taxi

[purplebargeken]

If I did that I think you'd be calling me something other than a 'true cab driver'. What a bloody stupid thing to do to someone. I think we have to be careful about this kind of comment otherwise it'll spawn a whole new  'what bastard cab drivers did to piss me off whilst I was driving' sub-thread. Ooops

 

Although round this way it is more likely to be Turkish/Bangladeshi mini-cab drivers. 

 

Anyway, hugely happy to see such an amount of uber liking for Jo the Taxi, especially amongst the more hard-core AS'ers. It gladdens my heart, it really does. Now, guess who I had in the back of my..........

[Mr Livered]

Wonderful looking motor. Jo le taxi... il va pas partout?

 

Looks a lot nicer than the one I had for a while, which was red, plastered with vinyl adverts which turned out to have been applied straight on top of some supreme bodgery, and cost me twice what you paid.

 

Oh, and the owner mentioned something about having lost the keys, and that he'd had some new ones made. So I collected it from the East End in the late afternoon, discovered there was very little diesel in it (as usual, when buying a cheap car) and when I got to the forecourt discovered that there was no key to the fuel filler cap.

 

So one thing I can report is that the fuel filler cap is actually really secure against being broken open. With only a basic toolkit in board, in fact it's very close indeed to impossible.

[purplebargeken]

I must live in some kind of really weird place 'cos the previous owner said he'd put in 1/2 a tank for me (which he did).

 

Ahhhh, I get it. I've actually died and gone to AS heaven. Now I'm just waiting for the nubile virgins.

 

Still waiting.

[ruffgeezer]

Yeah, they are probably all busy playing world of warcraft, Ken.

 

Nice buy on the cab, any plans for it?

[purplebargeken]

Well whatever they're doing they are far too busy to bother with me. 

 

Cheers. Hmm, I'll chuck it in for it's MOT next week and see what transpires. I will then bung on 6 months rent and chug around in it for a while. I'll attend to some of the trim issues and the odd bleb here and there, other than that....... not sure.

 

The big Five O birthday is popping along in April and there has been mention of some reasonable funds being made available for me to buy a car that I really, really want and will be a long term keeper (that means one that Mrs. PBK won't be embarrassed to be in or have outside the house  - so that will be a late 90's Micra then).

 

So, there may be a Taxi for sale (or whatever else I have at the time). I guess it just depends on how long it takes for me to find THAT car 

[Sean]

Superb buy mate, I'm really chuffed you are so happy with it!

 

If/when it becomes available I may well be interested. In light of your buy I've been doing some research online and I'm simply flabbergasted how many cheap ones are available - not as cheap as yours mind!!

[purplebargeken]

Cheers Sean. There are plenty around but they may well get a bit cheaper over the next few months. I think I was incredibly lucky with mine. The PO paid a lot more when he bought it and he said that he'd looked at a lot of shitpigs before finding this example of a decent cab. He said that there was a fair selection around the £500 mark but that they were comprehensively knackered.

 

There are some great resources online, lots of owners blogs and so on. It's all good. 

 

If it does go up for passing on, I will post it on AS well before anything else.

[purplebargeken]

It'll be going in for MOT asap, so let's see what that throws up (hopefully not literally).

[Mr Livered]

A lot of them are knackered because they have very hard lives, obviously, but there are cosseted ones.

 

Mine had been owned by some sort of company which hired it out to cabbies. I think it was hired out once during the day and then again to the geezer on the night shift, so it was almost constantly driving around. Presumably with a schedule like that, maintenance costs a lot in lost income, leading to the temptation to rush/skimp/bodge.

 

You've probably got an owner-driven cab that was polished and looked after properly when not on shift. That's what you want!

[purplebargeken]

Yes, it was an owner driver. The old boy got too old and unwell to carry on and sold it to the guy I bought it from. From what he was telling me it was indeed cossetted. It obviously has the odd dink here and there. It would be odd for it not to I guess. Anyway, I'm loving the experience (so far). 

 

Things to consider:

 

Get the new MOT - bit of a no-brainer 

 

Look at fitting a seat from a Rover 45 as the original is less than comfy, especially for my knackered back.

 

Buy a spare alternator belt and keep it in the car!

 

The centre console is a bit care-worn, I might take this out and spray it with vinyl paint. I had good results on my Triumph trim panels. It's the only bit that really shows wear.

 

The dash lights are a bit dull. I might look at replacing them, or perhaps look at LED options. Can anyone guide me on this?

 

Have a bit more of a think about those bloody crap side mirrors. 

 

Think that's about it really.

[Skizzer]

I've been away and missed all the excitement, but I'm definitely in the well bought / slightly jealous camp.  Good effort and fantastic use of £200 at more or less zero risk.

 

Aren't these now cheap because they fail the latest LEZ or some other regs for London?  (Generally I mean, not yours specifically.)

[Mr Livered]

Yes; all the Fairways have been given the boot. Not sure when they've got to be gone by though.

[purplebargeken]

I think the end of service this is virtually imminent. That is when the market will be more abundant (well duh - to self). 

[Cavcraft]

Looks mega VFM and is one of the motors quite high on my 'bucket list'. What are they like on fuel and are they (as people used to reckon) useless to drive if you're anywhere near six foot tall?

[cort16]

Looks like a bargain. Good luck for the MOT.

[Mr Livered]

Looks mega VFM and is one of the motors quite high on my 'bucket list'. What are they like on fuel and are they (as people used to reckon) useless to drive if you're anywhere near six foot tall?

Mine was pretty good on fuel, but mainly when being driven as intended (ie around town). Motorway driving wasn't so good - they're really slow, so if you want to go 70 or close to it, the engine had to really work, using more diesel. Apologies if that's not applicable to Ken's: it was my experience of a similar vintage model.

 

Value-wise, this is probably a classic supply and demand thing: there's a glut of them coming onto the market so they're cheap, but they're such style icons that in ten years time, when most of them have been cubed, I reckon we'll be flabberghasted that we used to be able to get them for £500 and less. These things have got to be a good investment.

[oman5]

Mine was pretty good on fuel, but mainly when being driven as intended (ie around town). Motorway driving wasn't so good - they're really slow, so if you want to go 70 or close to it, the engine had to really work, using more diesel. Apologies if that's not applicable to Ken's: it was my experience of a similar vintage model.

 

Value-wise, this is probably a classic supply and demand thing: there's a glut of them coming onto the market so they're cheap, but they're such style icons that in ten years time, when most of them have been cubed, I reckon we'll be flabberghasted that we used to be able to get them for £500 and less. These things have got to be a good investment.

I agree. if you have somewhere to keep one if might be worth putting it away for a few years. As Sam Glover would tell you, it used to be possible to buy a road legal Trabant for pennies back in the day. not now