Is It Safe to Buy an Ex-Taxi or Private Hire Car?

How to spot an ex-taxi or private hire car

There's rarely one giveaway. There are usually several, and they tend to appear together.

On the record

• Mileage far above average. The UK average is roughly 7,000–8,000 miles a year. A car showing 25,000–40,000 a year on its MOT history has been working for a living, whatever the seller calls it.
• Two MOT tests in one year. Many licensing authorities require a test every six months on licensed vehicles, so a run of six-monthly tests on the record is one of the clearest signs of licensed use.
• A sudden drop in annual mileage in the last year or two. That's the point the car came off the fleet and went back to private use.
• A keeper that looks like a company followed by a private buyer, which shows in the keeper history of the Full History Report.

On the car

• Holes or marks on the bumpers and doors where licence plates and stickers were fixed, or the ghost of a removed roof sign.
• Rear seats and door cards worn far more than the driver's seat would suggest — passengers, not one driver.
• A dual-fuel conversion, most often LPG, fitted to cut running costs.
• Sticker residue on the windscreen or rear glass where a licence or partition notice was displayed.
• A model that's over-represented in the trade: Toyota Prius and Auris hybrids, Skoda Octavia, Mercedes E-Class, and larger MPVs.

None of these is proof on its own. Together with the mileage pattern they usually are.

Why high mileage isn't the whole story

Mileage measures distance. Wear depends on how that distance was covered.

An airport-run hybrid doing 30,000 motorway miles a year has spent most of its life at a steady speed with the engine warm. A city minicab doing 30,000 miles of stop-start urban work has done far more clutch, brake, suspension and gearbox cycles per mile, and on a small diesel that pattern also tends to clog the exhaust filter.

Licensed cars are also serviced differently from private ones. Operators service on mileage, not on the calendar, because a car off the road is a car not earning. A fleet-serviced ex-taxi can have a fuller maintenance history than a privately owned car half its age. Ask for the invoices; a fleet car usually has them.

Hybrids deserve a specific mention. The Prius, Auris and their relatives were built for exactly this kind of use, and the electric motor takes much of the load in traffic. High-mileage hybrid taxis routinely run well past 200,000 miles. The hybrid battery is the part to ask about: check whether it has been replaced and whether the seller has any test results for it.

What to check in the MOT history

The MOT record is where an ex-taxi's past shows up whether anyone mentions it or not. Read it for:

• Suspension, brakes and tyres on a short cycle. These are the wear items urban work burns through. If the same suspension or brake advisory appears test after test, the operator was passing them and moving on. Typical ranges when the work is due: brakes £80–£400, suspension £80–£800, tyres £60–£300. The MOT advisories guide explains how to read them.
• Exhaust and emissions. Advisories or failures on the exhaust, or an emissions fail, are worth a proper look on a diesel that has done short urban trips. Exhaust work sits in a typical range of £80–£700.
• A mileage plateau. A car that did 35,000 a year for four years and then 6,000 has been de-fleeted. That's normal. What you want is a clean, rising trend without a drop that later readings don't rejoin — the mileage discrepancy guide explains why.
• Tests every six months, then yearly. The switch from six-monthly tests to annual ones usually marks the end of licensed use.

The free check reads the current advisories and turns them into a repair estimate, and its mileage timeline shows the annual pattern at a glance.

What the Full History Report shows

Taxi and private hire history is item 12 of the Full History Report — £9.99, one-off, no subscription, 60 days' access. Where licensing records used across the trade hold a record for the car, the report shows that a taxi or private hire licensing history exists, with the detail the records carry. Where those records hold nothing for the car, it says None found and notes that the search covered the councils in the records. Where the licensing records could not be checked at all, it says Not checked in grey rather than showing a tick.

The report describes the record. It doesn't tell you whether the car is a good buy, because that depends on the miles, the maintenance and the price, which are yours to judge. And like every history check, it can't guarantee a car's past: licensing records aren't complete for every authority and every year, so a clear result means nothing was found, not that nothing happened.

Price: cheaper for a reason

Ex-taxis sell for less than the same car with private mileage because most buyers won't consider them. That's the opportunity and the catch. The discount is real, but it prices in a shorter remaining life and a bigger chance of wear-item bills, so don't treat the low price as a bargain until you've counted what's due.

1. Take the free check's repair estimate and the repeat advisories from the MOT record and add them up.
2. Ask for the fleet service invoices. If they exist, the car was maintained; if the seller has nothing, assume the wear items are due.
3. Ask when the hybrid battery, clutch, or exhaust filter was last replaced, depending on the car.
4. Offer against comparable private-mileage cars, less the repair total, less a margin for the shorter life. The free check's market price shows you where comparable cars sit.

A seller who says “it was a company car” when the record shows six-monthly tests and 35,000 miles a year is either mistaken or hoping you won't look. Either way, the record is what you're buying. The used car buying checklist covers the rest of the viewing.