Why can’t a well looked after used family car such as my 9yr old Avensis be a taxi?

When we visited the Azores about 15 years ago, many of the taxis had been pensioned off from the Portuguese mainland, and still in the Lisbon livery, often with about half a million Km on the clock. I think some cabs on Crete are similar. It's all a matter of keeping them going. as you say.

But on those outer islands passengers are probably less fussy about what the interior looks like.

To which HJ answered by telling them to buy a Mazda CX-3 auto or a Honda Jazz 1.5 neither of which would be a sensible taxi or qualify with any local authority I know of. Odd reply I thought

Agree its another totally daft answer by the Honest John office.

But equally why doesn't the Taxi Driver asking the original question use their common sense and look at cars themselves and form their own opinion, its not that difficult surely.

it has to come out of service by 7yrs

Round these parts many years ago all the Taxis were total nails (mostly old Cortinas and Princesses) and when the Council appointed a new licensing officer his first task was to inspect them and take them off the road. This caused much upset. The drivers replaced them with a fleet of new FSO's which after a couple of years were in a worse state than the Cortinas and Princesses. Thankfully times have moved on and all the local cabs are perfectly presentable but some are older than 7 years.

But surely the best answer from Honest John would have been to suggest the Taxi drivers favourites which seem to be Octavias or if wheelchair access is needed modified Berlingo/Partner or Doblo.

But is this version of Honest John actually in the UK? A few weeks ago one version of Honest John seemed to be answering questions from the far east (and not London).

Edited by Avant on 02/03/2019 at 12:45