Renault Type AF 7.9hp taxi.

Renault type AG 7.9hp taxi, 1910. Registration no: CD2922. Engine no. 7304. Chassis no: 22634. This taxi seats four passengers. It is powered by a 2 cylinder 7.9 hp engine that drives through a 3 speed gearbox to the bevel rear axle. The radiator is mounted behind the engine.

The Renault Type AG is a taxi or hackney carriage made by the French automobile manufacturer Renault and was made between 1905 and 1910. It was the first motor taxi to be built in large numbers, and was introduced to large cities immediately, including in London from 1907. They were so successful that by the end of 1910 there were more motor taxis than horse-drawn cabs in London. This was quite significant – horse drawn hackney carriages had been used in London for centuries, and despite long being thought to derive from the French ‘haquené’, a term for a medium sized horse, it’s also linked with the area of Hackney in East London.

Long before the automobile, horse-drawn carriages were hired to transport people all over London. Taxi operation was disjointed at this time, and in 1654 the British parliament attempted to deal with the inconveniences caused by the irregular operation provided by hackney coachmen. Licenses were issued, and this still continues today with London black cab drivers having to pass a test called ‘the knowledge’ to prove their knowledge of the capital’s roads and routes.

It wasn’t only London where the Renault Type AG taxi was popular. Not far from where they were originally manufactured, they were introduced in Paris in 1906 and by the start of the First World War, most of the 3,000 taxis in Paris were Type AG’s. During fighting at the start of the war, the French Army’s 62nd Division arrived at a railway station near Paris, but they were still a significant distance from their intended destination, the Battle of the Marne. Between the 6th and 8th September, the fleet of Paris taxis and drivers were commandeered by the French Army and transported around 4,000 men to the front lines. Even though the vast majority of the rest of the soldiers arrived to the battle by train, the idea of soldier’s being dropped off by a Paris city taxi boosted the morale of the French Army and the civilian population, leading to the taxi’s being referred to as Taxi de la Marne or Marne Taxi from then on.

Renault type AGs were popular outside of the capitals of Europe too, and this particular vehicle was used as a taxi at Hove station in East Sussex from 1910 until the 1930s.