When your car is a cab

Taxi! It s a global cry but in London and many other British cities it means only one thing: the imminent (one hopes) arrival of the classic vehicle that is the London black cab.

Taxi! It s a global cry but in London and many other British cities it means only one thing: the imminent (one hopes) arrival of the classic vehicle that is the London black cab.

It is designed precisely for its driving environment. It has a 25ft turning circle to ensure that, in the UK's narrow city streets, it can drop a passenger off on one side of the road and pick up the next fare on the other without any cumbersome three-point turns. Go suck on that, SUV drivers.

Even its interior space was intentionally designed with enough headroom to ensure that top-hatted gentlemen could remain correctly attired on board.

But for most people, it is the distinctive curvaceous design, particularly the now-ageing FX4 model or its replacement TX1, and the rumbling diesel growl that give the majority of taxi-users that sense of delight and relief at its arrival.

Increasingly those charms are being recognised among private drivers. Owning one is a funny combination of the ordinary and extraordinary. While no one bats an eyelid at seeing a London taxi driving or parked on any city street, if you are a non-cabbie you are part of a small and select group.

Other drivers tend to make way for black cabs, perhaps because they are aware that time is literally money for working cabbies.

The empty front-seat space plus the saloon area which can legally take five people must contain several hundred gallons of storage space.

To buy a brand new TX1 Bronze model with radio and 43 other features as standard, would set you back just under £29,000. But second-hand, a London cab can be bought for as little as £500 or for as much as £20,000.

As with all cars, you get what you pay for. The high-value vehicles are the few remaining examples of inter-war Beardmore and Austin models which have been well restored.

The bulk of those for sale are either FX4s, built between 1958 and 1981, the similar LTI Fairway from 1982 to 1996, or the more boxy Metrocabs, built between 1996 and 2002 when the last owner went into receivership.

There was a glut of FX4s after 2001 rules stipulating wheelchair access prompted many cabbies to upgrade, rather than pay the £1,500 to get the cab correctly refitted. As Malcolm Bobbitt in his book Taxi!, published by Velco Books, warns: a cab purchased for a minimum amount may be an investment but a cab in a poor state of repair will, without doubt, be very expensive to restore.

This is where I can offer my own cautionary tale. I had seen an old London cab parked on the side of the road, with a sign behind the windscreen saying "For sale, £700 or nearest offer".

Of course, it was too good to be true. It took a wad of cash just to get it going, and hundreds more for it to be repeatedly repaired, and finally, and humiliatingly, it was wrecked by a gang of local vandals.

I paid £600 after knocking £100 off the asking price on my black R-reg FX4 - R-reg as in 1976, rather than 1996. The mileometer had given up the ghost but it was safe to assume it had done a million miles. I had to sort out insurance. My patient broker did a deal for £600. Then, of course, there was the tax disc and the local parking permit.

The next day, it failed to start and only when the seller came round with a can of something he called "heroin for cabs" which he sprayed straight into the carburettor, did it cough back into life .

This worked for a couple of days and then it refused to start again. There was nothing for it but to get a man with a tow-truck to take it to a garage.

Another cash transaction and the cab and I made it to a taxi garage in Hornsey, north London, where the owner - who was a tolerant man with the build of a former boxer - said he would "sort her out".

At last, the cab was fit to drive. And it was a wonderful experience. As you sit in the driver's seat, you hear the deep growl of the engine, enjoy the crude but effective power steering, and catch a quizzical look from real cabbies, as they spot the lack of that telltale plate from the Public Carriage Office that marks out real taxis.

The meter and the distinctive amber taxi light are removed by the PCO before the vehicle can be sold on, but that does not stop desperate-looking people - we've all been there - trying to flag you down.

Despite its increasing age, the FX4, with its unmistakable curved bodywork, is the classic cab to own. It survived for 40 years before being unsuccessfully challenged by the Metrocab and finally by the more luxurious TX1.

With a maximum speed of 60mph and a three-speed automatic gearbox, it is perfect for city driving - even if you are not allowed to use the bus lanes. I used it for family visits to friends and days out - sometimes with the handy partition screen shut.

But it was too good to last. One failing with older cabs is a poor locking system and without the PCO plate, it was an obvious target. So one morning I woke up to find the cab missing.

I looked down the road and to my horror found it slammed into a lamppost on the pavement of the road that crossed at the bottom.

I traded in the wreck for a 1986 FX4 with a radio, to which I added mini bike locks on the door handles. But it was blue, with a sunroof and never had the same magic.

Despite that, it was fun to own and a joy to drive, and, given the right circumstances, I will have another go at being the owner of a traditional London black cab, perhaps even splash out on a first-generation TX1.