The taxi you drive: Who says the game’s dead?!

Things are finally beginning to settle down in the world of the cab dealers and traders. I should stress that “settled down” only means that nothing has changed in the past month. There are still very few cabs for sale, very few garages have any stock and prices are still high, particularly for late low mileage Euro VI cabs.

The price of late Vito cabs was always pretty much set by the Mercedes specialist garages and dealers and those being accepted for a part exchange against a new TXe are always underwritten before the LEVC dealers give a price. Until very recently this worked well.

However, I am now hearing stories of lower than expected prices being quoted for a trade in but it’s unclear why or who is setting the price. With the shortage of supply, I would advise any Merc owner looking at chopping it in against a new TXe to get several quotes. Don’t just source quotes from LEVC dealers, but also directly from some of the Vito specialists or to consider selling it privately.

A total of 161 new TXe cabs joined the ranks, in July. There are now around 2,150 silently plying for hire on the city streets. If we see similar sales figures in August, and a higher number with the new ’69 plate in September, we will be at around 2,500, putting the trade possibly on target for just under 3,000, or around 15% of the fleet, by the end of the year. In fact, it’s only these record sales that have stopped the fleet shrinking after such a large number of older cabs have been decommissioned. Now that the decommissioning scheme is reaching its end, if the new cab sales hold up, we will start to see an increase in the overall taxi fleet in London, halting years of steady decline. Who says the game is dead?

Image: LEVC