Nissan's New London Taxi

By Henny Hemmes
Senior European Editor
The Auto Channel

AMSTERDAM, August 6, 2012. When you visit London, you cannot overlook the London Taxi, or even have a ride in the black cab that was based on the 1948 Austin FX3, built by Carbodies of Coventry, and from 1958 was replaced by the FX4. In the early eighties, Carbodies bought the production rights from Austin, but had little money left for the development of a new model and therefore stuck to new drive trains.

Most popular was the Nissan TD27 diesel engine, which was offered in 1989 in the Fairway model. Because of the easy access, also for wheel chairs, it has been the favorite of the cabbies to this very day

In the meantime the TX1 with its retro design, and its later successors, the TXII and TX4, replaced the iconic cab, while new regulations, restricting the use of taxis over 15 years old, will result in de disappearance of the and in the next few month the cab from the London roads.

Nissan has now presented its view on an innovative new London Taxi, which uses the NV200 design and packaging. It easily takes five passengers, who have the best possible view through the large side windows. They also have easy access thanks to the twin sliding doors that are an advantage over the more traditional competitors.

By extending the aperture of the left-hand door in width and height, it also meets the requirements of wheelchair users. At the rear the NV200 Taxi has twin leading doors that split 70/30 and give access tot a large luggage area which can be enlarges by sliding (part of) the rear three-seat units forwards.

The Nissan Cab is small enough to navigate through the narrow streets and in order to improve visibility in urban traffic, the NV200 London Taxi’s indicators have been moved into the lower half of the bumper, further towards the outer edge of the car. They are integrated with LED daytime running lights.

The roof sign has been especially been developed and has been approved by Transport for London.

The London Taxi project is the third after the successful ones for New York City and Tokyo.. There also is an electric e-NV200 in the planning.