Taxis and their stories: the most famous anecdotes in taxi history

Famous taxi anecdotes mix history and legend. The best known are these: the name of the Parisian hire carriage, the fiacre, is linked to a saint; the mathematician Blaise Pascal launched a carriage service along fixed routes in Paris in 1662; in 1914 hundreds of Parisian taxis carried soldiers to the front at the Battle of the Marne; yellow became popular for New York taxis because a highly visible colour was wanted; and London taxi drivers have to memorise the city for a legendary exam. Cinema, for its part, turned the taxi into the setting for classics.

We gather them here, distinguishing where necessary between what is documented and what is tradition. Everyday stories from the trade are in taxi drivers' anecdotes.

For centuries, in Paris and much of Europe, the hire carriage was called a fiacre. According to the traditional explanation, the name comes from a Paris inn dedicated to Saint Fiacre, a monk of Irish origin, next to which carriages were hired out in the mid-17th century. Coachmen and their customers began calling those carriages by the name of the place, and the word stuck.

It is an example of how many transport names come from a particular place or person. In Madrid something similar happened with the simón (the old Madrid hackney carriage).

Blaise Pascal is known for mathematics, physics and philosophy, but in 1662 he also helped launch a carriage service in Paris that ran along fixed routes to a timetable, for a modest fare per seat: the so-called “carrosses à cinq sols” (five-sol coaches). More than a taxi, it was a forerunner of the city bus. The service was successful at first, but it did not last long. The idea of cheap shared transport would have to wait almost two more centuries to take hold.

This is probably the most celebrated anecdote in taxi history. In September 1914, during the First Battle of the Marne, the French army urgently needed to get reinforcements to the front. Hundreds of Paris taxis were requisitioned, and in a single night they carried thousands of soldiers towards the front line. According to the most often repeated version, some did so with the meter running and the state paid the fares afterwards.

Historians debate how much it really influenced the outcome of the battle, but the episode became a national symbol in France and one of the favourite stories of taxi drivers all over the world.

In the early 20th century, American taxi companies wanted their cars to be recognisable from a distance. The choice of yellow is attributed to John Hertz, founder of a taxi company in Chicago, who picked it because it was a particularly visible colour. The model spread to other cities and, over time, New York made yellow compulsory for its licensed taxis. Today it is almost a symbol of the city.

To drive a black cab in London you have to pass The Knowledge, an exam that requires memorising thousands of streets, squares and places of interest and being able to work out in your head the route between any two points. Preparing for it can take years. A scientific study published in 2000 found that an area of the brain linked to spatial memory, the hippocampus, was larger in these taxi drivers than in other people. We tell the story in the extraordinary brain of taxi drivers.

Few professions have given cinema so much material. In Taxi Driver (1976), by Martin Scorsese, the New York night taxi is the setting for the main character's loneliness. In Spanish cinema, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988), by Pedro Almodóvar, left us the colourful Madrid “mambo taxi” and its peculiar driver to remember. We look at these and other films in the taxi in cinema.

All these anecdotes have something in common: they show the taxi as more than a car with a meter. It is a service that turns up at decisive moments, a trade with its own know-how and a space where life happens. If you want to place them in time, you will find the full timeline in the history of taxis.

Ours is less epic, but just as useful: taking you to Barajas at any time with a price you know before you get in. Check the fares by area or order your car by messaging us with taxi by WhatsApp.