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There may be a simple answer to this, but why are E-Class Merc's still so common as Taxis in so many countries? I don't think I've ever seen a BMW 5 series Taxi, but they have more room in the back, similar sized boots and better fuel economy, am I missing something?
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The stronger engined BMW 5 series are indeed wonderful cars. My brother has been a true lover of BMW 5 series for years and years.
In Dublin where I live, one sees the odd E Class taxi. I saw a brand new one the other day. I think some of these people run them for special Mercedes hire ( luxury taxi group) and then use them as normal taxis when they want the extra cash. I know there is a luxury group that use Mercedes. Any normal taxi here that happens occasionally to be Mercedes ( normally they are older second hand Mercedes ex UK). A lot of secondhand luxury cars come over here from England, as there is less tax to pay on older ones.
The world over, a Mercedes looks posh as a semi limo car from hotels and functions etc. In Paris I had to stay a night at the Marriot Hotel. For normal taxi prices the hotel sent a Mercedes S Class to the airport. Don't worry it is not the way I normally travel!!! Very nice though for once!! Thank goodness I was a passenger. I wouldn't like to drive in Paris.
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Not really, Mercs from that era were designed not to wear out. Or at least to go on running when in an advanced state of dilapidation. Have you ever seen a Cairo taxi?
My father's firm bought a number of Mercedes 1418 trucks in the mid 1960s, after years of buying Leylands, Albions, etc. After years of making sure drivers topped up engines with oil every morning and a regular round of blow-ups and breakdowns they were staggered to find that, although they were designed to be driven harder , the Mercs all did hundreds of thousands of miles with minimal attention.
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>>the Mercs all did hundreds of thousands of miles with minimal attention.
Likewise the 1626s and 2419s that my father ran.
He took a huge amount of convincing to buy German (after his European grand tour in the early 40s). One salesman, with whom he got on well defected from the AEC dealer in Burnley to the Merc dealer in Blackburn. This salesman just left a Merc demonstrator in my dad's yard, with the keys on the tyre. Eventually after a breakdown, the demonstrator truck got pressed into service, and soon after, we were preparing the first Merc for painting in the company's colours.
As well as the big things, it was also a revelation in the quality of the little things. Replacing brake diaphragm rubbers in the AECs and Leylands was routine. In 15 years of running half a dozen Mercs, we only replaced the diaphragms on one axle of one Merc once!
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You are dead right Mike Hannon and Number Cruncher, and then like most makers they spoilt the recipe by sticking the super dooper powerliner electronic gearbox in the next generation, and lost all that simple old fashioned mechanical reliability.
Closely followed by more computers than you could shake a stick at....progress?
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Why Merc E-Class as a taxi?
Because they have a well-earned reputation for comfort and fare-payers like a bit of prestige. BMW 5-series, on the other hand certainly do not rate as comfortable with the often-fitted sports suspension and run-flat tyres.
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I was in the Gambia recently. The official yellow town/tourist taxis were inevitably old E class Mercs.
The much cheaper,non -tourist green taxis were even more delapidated E class. Missing handles, gearknobs,speedos not working, violent shuddering etc etc. But they just kept on going.
Hotel security got very upset if a green taxi ventured into the tourist zone.
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Which is the W211 E-class?
IMO there are never enough of them around. Whenever I wait at a foreign airport in the taxi queue all the people ahead of me get into a Merc. When my turn comes I'm always lucky enough to get the ageing Toyota Avensis (or in Dublin some converted van).
Ah, AECs... Mammoth Majors, Mercurys, Mandators, RT buses... Oh, and Leyland Octopuses and Beavers, Guy Big Js...
Edited by Mad Maxy on 01/03/2008 at 20:16
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Which is the W211 E-class?
The one before the current shape.
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The one before the current shape.
The W211 is the current shape.
Edited by Dynamic Dave on 02/03/2008 at 15:23
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>> The one before the current shape. The W211 is the current shape.
>>
Of course it is!! Silly me. (And to think I used to own one ... !!)
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Mad Maxy.
I live in Dublin and I can tell you there are indeed plenty of converted vans in taxi fleets here. I hate them. Sometimes it's hard to get the safety belt in the back to work. I have often ended up with a dud. The suspension is like a bouncing plank. Horrible!!! They have some decent. I have to admit, that if you get a new Toyota Avensis it is very comfortable. The elderly Japanese Taxis are often terrible. It is true that the other day that a brand new black Mercedes E Class taxi was driving behind me. If you see Mercedes E class Taxis here they are not very plentiful and they are normally definitely not new. Twice I was in an old shape S Class Taxi in Dublin, that was comfortable!! Same fare as the converted vans!! Wow!!
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Simple answer: They don't break down, and when they do there is an endless supply of free parts from the cars nicked from the UK streets, broken up and the mechanical bits shipped abroad.
And even without galvanising they don't rust (except in the UK where our wet and salty climate is hard on them).
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Many years ago when I went with my wife and young daughter on holiday to Kefelonia ( excuse my lack of spelling). We stayed at a lovely hotel by the sea. The local hotel taxi driver was a delightful family man and very strongly built. He drove a white coloured E Class Taxi. I noticed that it was kept polished up and looked in mint condition. We decided to take a ride in this taxi to the next town and back. Well I noticed that the comfortable front seats were loose and moving about. No safety belts! ( probably very different now). The road was very scenic with lots of tight harpin bends. Well to put a long story short, he just pulled out and overtook blind on one of these bends. Suddenly a large bus appeared,it was coming straight towards us ( it was not a wide road).Bluntly there was no room for him to escape! I am normally not a nervous driver, but I confess I closed my eyes!! I genuinely thought that was it!!! Very luckily they didn't collide I don't know how. My wife and I were shaking and quite pale. I am not exaggerating!!
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CM6
S class taxi. Wow! I once had a C class in Dublin - a bit small for a taxi, but very nice. I also managed to get a ride in the latest E class in Athens. Again, very nice.
I'm rather hankering after a Merc C class to replace my E91 320d M Sport Touring - ride too hard on our lousy roads, knobbly run-flats and quality niggles.
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Mad Maxy.
Thanks for the interesting message. I simply adore Mercedes Benz cars. Ever since I was extremely young in the late 1950s in Dublin. My late father got very sick with flu ( he never normally took a day off sick), I got a Blue Cab taxi up to my school. To my delight at that time it was the slow old rattly tank the 180D Mercedes. I thought it was the greatest, so my love affair with Mercedes had begun. Blue Cabs still exist; but no Mercedes and not blue anymore.What a pity!!!!
I had my eye on buying a new C Class( I hired the old one and test drove the new). The lack of upper support in the upper part of the seat let it down unfortunately( in the new one). My young daughter and my father-in-law both felt uncomfortable.They are not normally the moaning type of person or stuck up in any way. It broke my heart, so I still drive my excellent Seat Toledo TdiSE 1.9 110 bhp.After 153,000 miles it still performs perfectly and over 60 mpg on long runs.
The E Class is superbly comfortable. My dream car would be the E class 220 diesel automatic ( must be auto with a Mercedes E Class).
Some years ago, (since the Kefalonia trip), we were in an E Class Taxi going from the new Athens airport into the City Centre. The old driver took out a bottle ( I hope water)! and drank whilst driving. In one place he nearly banged the back of another car, he wanted to nearly knock it off the road. He shouted " woman Driver" !! Try that in the UK or Ireland and they would have you in court!!!
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E Classes are the traditional choice for taxi drivers in Germany because they are reliable, go forever, are roomy, comfortable and the customers like them. They're also not a bad place for a driver to spend a long working day. Mercedes' reputation in fulfilling the first 2 points took a bit of a knock a few years ago, but still very much the favourite taxi cab here.
Quite a few S Class taxis in Munich, also 7 Series. It's normally the owner of the taxi company who's treated himself to something a bit more special than the ubiquitous E Class. I was surprised to find you can get a business lease on an S320CDI for around 900 Euros a month which I guess is actually quite reasonable for a business owner with a reasonable turnover. Admittedly, once you've added a few toys from the options list the end price will be considerably higher.
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Bagpuss.
I find your letter here very interesting.I am very glad to see that they are still using a great many Mercedes Taxis in Germany. From reading and hearing a lot of information,it really does look as if Mercedes Benz have had their electrical problems fixed. Such a fortune was spent on it, and top people were replaced etc etc. I would have faith in them now.
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Mercedes make a taxi version of the e class it has stronger seats and one or two other differences BMW don't and they will not hack the hammer in the taxi game hence you very rarely see one in Germany on the ranks.One more point they come out of the factory in the sickly creamy yellow colour which is not paint but stick on folia they are normally metalic silver underneath.
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With the relability problems of the 00 -06 E class do you think it is worth buying one as a family car with short runs during the week and longer at weekends?
I was looking at an 03 CDi but the negative press has put me off. Should it worry me?
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No. All the faults should have been fixed by now. See more at the merc forums.
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If I had the ready cash, there is no question I would buy a 220 D E Class. A Dublin taxi driver a while ago told me the electrics are now fixed. They removed the offending ones. Some company badly let the company down with electrics. At least the present people in charge are absolutely determined to get it right.
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The serious corrosion problems affected the W210 (1996-2002). The W211 (2003 onwards) seems to be better in that respect, but there have been reports of electronic and other issues. However, it is a much-improved model. See HJ's Car-by-Car Breakdown.
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I travel to Amsterdam a fair bit with work, and probably nine times out of ten, the taxi which takes me from the airport to the office is a current E-class, usually a 220 or 270CDi variant.
They impress the heck out of me as a passenger. Comfy, quiet and seem to pull really well, even in lowly 220 CDi guise. Creamy smooth autoboxes mean you hear rather than feel gearchanges, and as a lot of Amsterdam cabbies are complete lunatics (and 160 km/h+ is commonly achieved on the motorway as soon as we're out of the environs of Schiphol airport ), you get to experience the full range of performance.
Even a 200,000 km'er I was in last year still wafted along on a lovely wave of beautifully auto-transmitted torque, didn't rattle AT ALL, and looked fresh as a daisy.
These cars play a big part in my scepticism over the horror stories of rubbish Merc build quality and inherent common rail diesel unreliability.
Cheers
DP
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I see in the latest AutoExpress, they stripped down the present Mercedes E 320D Estate after 60,000 miles. They seem to have been extremely pleased with the true quality of the car.Also the quality materials used were mentioned.
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Slightly off the Merc topic here I know, but last week I was in Morzine in the French alps. We booked a taxi one evening; it was a Land Rover Discovery '3' (the current one) TD6, that had covered 143000kms. Still seemed very tight and only wear I noticed was to the gear knob. I was very surprised to see this being used as a taxi.
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I was very surprised to see this being used as a taxi.
I wouldn't be - not in Morzine - rather hilly and prone to Snow.
You see more 4x4s around there than you do anywhere else in France. No point having a vehicle you can only use six months a year!
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snipquoteYou see more 4x4s around there than you do anywhere else in France. No point having a vehicle you can only use six months a year!
It was the only 4x4 that I saw being used as a taxi, the rest were Espace's.
Edited by Dynamic Dave on 04/03/2008 at 10:25
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