Minicab shite

[garethj]

Before I started my fabulous career of today, I used to work a few weekends as a doorman when I was a student. The taxi rides home were a thing of joy in "above average mileage" Sierras and Cavaliers where the drivers always ran them on the cheapest 2star or unleaded and they pinked like a bastard.

 

Today I had a minicab ride that brought it all back

 

Car: Citroen Picasso

Driver: Asian bloke

Distance: 4 miles, but his route was closer to 9

Misc notes:

 

The heater was stuck on so we had to have the windows open, the mileage read 35,000 but no way was that true, it was well past 200,000 at least. I wouldn't be surprised if it was double that.

 

The service light was on, as was the airbag warning light. The speedo was under-reading by a comical amount, it was saying 70mph but we were barely doing 50. The gearbox was protesting noisily, but it was drowned out by the wheel bearings when we went around a corner or went over a bump.

 

The driving was minicabing from the old school He used second gear and fifth. Anything that didn't fit in those speed ranges were done with the aid of the clutch, such as trundling through town at 25mph, slipping the clutch the whole way.

 

We arrived at my house and I could uncurl my toes at last. The trip was £7.50 but I gave him a tenner and told him to keep the change. He'd need it for the busfare to get home.....

[Negative Creep]

The heater was stuck on so we had to have the windows open, the mileage read 35,000 but no way was that true, it was well past 200,000 at least. I wouldn't be surprised if it was double that.

 

The service light was on, as was the airbag warning light. The speedo was under-reading by a comical amount, it was saying 70mph but we were barely doing 50. The gearbox was protesting noisily, but it was drowned out by the wheel bearings when we went around a corner or went over a bump.

 

To be fair, most Citroens will do that at 30k

[garethj]

To be fair, most Citroens will do that at 30k

Good point, well made.There was so much Back To Black Cockpit Shine on the dashboard that I was starting to give me a migraine from the fumes

[Justin Case]

Citroen minicab, that sounds a bit optimistic In Birmingham I think a Toyota Avensis (old model) is compulsory

[bones96]

when i was up in wigan 3 years ago saw a couple of j plate orions being used as cabs lol

[The Main]

Goimg back a bit I know, but I remember getting in a cab outside Bournemouth station one sunny Friday afternoon in May 1998. The car? A yellow, L-reg and tatty Mark 3 Cortina 1600L. It was 25 years old. Bet 'they' don't allow that kind of thing down there anymore!Wish I'd bothered to take a picture!

[bigstraight6]

Goimg back a bit I know, but I remember getting in a cab outside Bournemouth station one sunny Friday afternoon in May 1998. The car? A yellow, L-reg and tatty Mark 3 Cortina 1600L. It was 25 years old. Bet 'they' don't allow that kind of thing down there anymore!Wish I'd bothered to take a picture!

Business takes me to Bournemouth quite often, and I've seen a Peugeot 505 estate still being used for taxi work in the area, quite easy to spot too being painted yellow! And here in Plymouth I've seen a late 80's Merc 190 taxi a few times in the last couple of weeks.....

[Ratdat]

I used to live down that way and that Mk3 was well known. It was amazing they allowed it to be used even then. My mum used to drive cabs down in Christchurch and my sister abd brother in law even ran their own cab company for a bit. My mum used to drive a Stella and an early Camry for Wades taxi. Class motors the pair of them.

[Guest]

There's age limits in place throughout the district, but there's some very strange taxi action in Castleford - a large proportion of the fleet is made up of MG ZS diesels, they even have a secret chopshop where they fix up crash-damaged ones. That's what happens when you have age limits - I bet half of the stuff out there is on at least a Cat C, there's loads of 3 year old cars with a load of panels rattlecanned over, etc. Least if it was a Sierra, Carina E or something it'd probably just be a bit tatty-looking rather than a potential deathtrap.

[Negative Creep]

Since I do a lot of late night deliveries, minicabbers are pretty much my worst enemy. I'm normally the one fuming behind them as they once again stop dead without warning, block the road with a perfectly good space next to them, run red lights or perform an illegal u turn at a seconds notice There was a Granada around until not too ago, now it's the usual snorefest of Octavias, Lagunas and those Peugeot Partner things

[Pillock]

potential deathtrap.

[Guest]

Urgh! Now, now..... I don't think they're half-way cut and shuts, but I imagine a lot of them are complicated monocoque shells which have been repaired using the traditional "tie to lamp post" method.

[Split_Pin]

The only memory I have of a truly shite minicab was a red c-reg Cavalier saloon that I took with my family on our way to Center Parcs in 1990.I remember the driver telling me it was on its 3rd time round the clock, but what sticks in my mind is the fact that the dashboard had sheared completely, all the way across the centre console under the radio or heater controls Vibrated like a bugger too!

[Guest]

We once took a cab to the airport (1 mile away ) when going on a family holiday, would have been circa 1991. A Hyundai Stellar "New Yorker" special edition turned up - can't have been more than a few weeks old. I was maybe 12 or 13 at the time and remember sitting in the front, thinking how poor the headroom was.

[Justin Case]

We once took a cab to the airport (1 mile away ) when going on a family holiday, would have been circa 1991. A Hyundai Stellar "New Yorker" special edition turned up

Think yourself lucky it wasn't a few years later and you were living in Telford. They brought in one of these 'nothing older than 3 years' policies and the enterprising minicabbers bought up the last remaining pile of FSO Polonezes. I even think they were diesel :(I'm not sure which lasted shorter, the cars or the policy

[trigger]

Ipswich still seem to used old cars, Often see a N-reg Mk1 Mondeo and R reg VW Passat doing the rounds among others.On the other hand, I remember when younger still living in Colchester one the taxi drivers we often got used a brand new Subaru Impreza WRX Turbo as a cab, God knows what that must of cost to run!

[r.welfare]

Christ, I can't remember the last time I was in a minicab - I don't get out much. Probably the most memorable trip I took in one was from downtown Munich to the airport at 5am, in a VW Touran doing 160km/h and describing a perfect sine wave of two-and-a-half lanes amplitude and 200m pitch. All the way down the sodding autobahn. The driver must have been tired, or pissed; and I was both, having enjoyed three steins at the Oktoberfest a short time before...

[AnthonyG]

I was once 'driven' from Ealing to Richmond in the pouring rain by a guy who refused to use the wipers, (they did work, he would occasionally use the flickwipe). Naturally, it was a Daewoo Nubira .But my worst minicab ride was late night (3amish) London - Clapham Junction to Ealing in a 2000ish (welfare shape) Accord, totally illegal, totally foreign (Daily Mail moment!) driver of course. Atrocious on/off brake/accelerator driving as they all do, driver got completely lost in Putney trying to drop one of my mates off, but the worst thing was I was in 'sandbag' (middle of rear seat, behind centre console) position from Clapham to Putney. Naturally the centre belt was nowhere to be found. I was sitting between a couple who I found out 6 months later had broken up about 10 mins before the trip . I muttered a silent thank you to the gods of Japanese engineering and the guys at Swindon who had bolted the car (and in particular the braking system) together after arriving at my destination .

[Mr Lobster]

Not had much minicab action here of late although have used a few in Greece, mainly to get from airport to ferryport or vice versa.One was a Toyota Corona (which looked like an old Avensis IIRC) with 560k on the clock. Plenty of squeaks and rattles but otherwise ok.Then there was a Peugeot 405 in Rhodes a year or two back although it was actually quite nice for its age.Then again, when its warm, sunny and you've just landed you don't really care do you

[wuvvum]

There's a minicab firm in the next town over from me that still has a Sierra on the fleet. There's still a few Mk1 Mondeos doing the rounds in Norwich, but the majority of minicabs there (as, I would imagine, pretty much anywhere) are Octavia SDI's.

[andrew e]

Best cab? 5 door AX in Tunisa 10 years ago, the paint had worn to bare steel on the inside of the doors Round here its on the rank under 3 years old, off the rank at 6!

[Pillock]

It's all boring stuff round here, Avensii mostly with the odd last-shape Mondeo. They do the black-car-white-bonnet-and-boot thing on a lot of them, and I notice one of the newer firms has instead gone for white car, black bonnet and boot so I reckon there's some swapping going off with the older firms :)Once got a taxi in Brussels, guy turned up in the most battered 190E I've ever seen and hauled the luggage into the boot, so I had no choice but to get in the car. If it wasn't physically impossible I'd swear this thing immediately started doing 160km/h from a standing start, and held it there the entire length of the journey into the city, to the square with the pissing boy.

[Karmann Ghiaman]

We once had one that RAN OUT OF PETROL in broad daylight in the Gray's Inn Road, about half a mile from out target, St Pancras. He scuttled off with a can & soon returned with enough to get us there. It was so surreal that I just paid the sad little man (though tip there was none, except to suggest that he might be happier appearing on the Apprentice, or doing anything else that didn't involve driving a car).