The top things to look out for that will tell you a car had a former life ferrying about thousands of passengers.

When you’re buying a used car, there’s plenty of things to look out for – such as its service history, its mechanical condition, its previous owners and so on.

But there’s also the potential that the car you’re looking at wasn’t just used as personal transportation in its former life, and that instead it was a vehicle which had a hard-working existence as a taxi.

Here are our tips to spot if the car you are potentially buying was a taxi.

Higher than normal mileage for the year of the car

Let’s start with the most obvious. Hundreds of thousands of kilometres showing on the odometer isn’t, in and of itself, a sure sign that the car was a taxi previously, but if the vehicle has done 250,000km-plus in only three, four or five years, then that’s abnormally high distance for such a short space of time.

Despite the fact that they spend most of their working life at lower speeds and they typically stay within the confines of cities and towns on local roads, experts reckon taxis can still cover up to three or four times the annual distance that a privately owned car of the same specification and age would do.

So balance the number on the odometer with the numbers on the registration plate of the car, to see if you think it might be showing excessive mileage for its age. If you do think that, then it’s possible you’ve got a former taxi on your hands.

“Big, spacious and comfortable cars which are reasonably affordable to run are popular taxis, as are reliable and fuel-efficient hybrids.”

Excessive wear and tear in the interior

A really shiny, almost totally smooth steering wheel, pedals in the driver’s footwell that don’t have any rubber left on them, and tired-looking seats are all sure giveaways that a car was driven a lot on a daily basis over a long period of time, and is therefore highly likely to have been a taxi.

On the last of those three points, pay particular attention to the rear seats. It’s not unusual for the driver’s seat in any older, higher-mileage car to be badly worn, especially on the bolster near the door, because it’s the one seat in a vehicle that is guaranteed to be occupied every time the car is driven. But, apart from families with young children, most private car owners rarely use the rear seats, and they can often look pristine, even in vehicles which have been around for a decade and more. So, if they’re cracked, worn, saggy or stained, or more typically you can see signs of damage on the backs of the front seats ahead of them, it’s a good indicator that you’re looking at an ex-taxi.

Connected to that, closely inspect the rear door handles inside and outside the car. If they’re really scuffed and scratched, or smooth and shiny on the interior with bits of trim flaking off, again it’s a signal that the rear doors have been used more often than not, so it was probably a taxi before.

Damage or signs of repair to the dashboard

Various meters and bits of taxi-specific equipment have to be retrofitted to cars to make them into taxis, and this often means brackets and mounts are either screwed into or glued onto the dashboard. Therefore, give the front fascia of the car you’re looking at a really thorough inspection. Any circular patches of adhesive residue or small holes in surfaces you can spot indicate the car was a taxi.

Excessive servicing record

As a taxi driver, your vehicle is your livelihood, so it needs to work reliably, day in, day out – downtime is the enemy. Therefore, the driver or the taxi firm in question tend to put their cars in for more regular servicing and maintenance work to prevent their vehicles spending any unnecessary time off the road. So, if you can see the service record of the vehicle you’re looking at, and it has had services at far more regular intervals than the manufacturer’s recommended schedule, then you’re probably looking at an ex-taxi.

Baggy clutch, weak brakes

Checking these will require a test drive of the vehicle in question, plus a bit of mechanical nous, but if you’re testing a manual car and the clutch feels incredibly floppy or has a really high biting point (i.e., the point of left-hand-pedal travel where you can feel the engine is starting to apply drive to the car’s wheels), or alternatively the brakes are a bit weak and ineffective-feeling, it’s a good sign the model you’re looking at was a taxi.

Taxis tend to spend most of their working life entirely in cities and built-up areas, where there’s lots of stop-start driving that puts extra strain on components like the clutch, brakes and suspension, and while taxi firms will do whatever they can to mitigate that during a vehicle’s operational life, across the course of thousands of kilometres then the brakes and clutch in particular will take more hammer than they should do in heavy city traffic. A loose, baggy gearshift in a manual transmission is another sure sign of taxi duties and is harder to fix than replacing a clutch, or some brake pads and discs.

Strange smells in the interior – including cleaning products

Without wishing to go into too much graphic detail, taxis often work hardest late at night ferrying people back from being on the town – which can lead to unfortunate accidents in the interior. And anyone who has had that happen in their own car, most usually with children feeling travel sick, will tell you it’s one of the hardest smells to ever get rid of. To combat that, taxi firms often go to town with the cleaning products, so if there’s an overriding whiff of strong detergents in an older car’s cabin, that’s a good sign it was formerly a taxi.

Be aware of typical models

Big, spacious and comfortable cars which are reasonably affordable to run are popular taxis, as are reliable and fuel-efficient hybrids. This means there are certain vehicles which are top picks for taxi companies. Larger Skoda models with turbodiesel engines, for example, such as the Octavia and Superb, are often seen as taxis. And then, on the other side of things, Toyota hybrids are brilliant cars for taxi duties – so the Prius, most typically, and many of them have been imported as used cars from Japan.

On the flipside of this, if you want to almost guarantee avoiding ex-taxis, then look at cars that don’t have five doors and a big boot. Coupes, convertibles and three-door hatchbacks are not used as taxis because they would be highly impractical for passengers to get into and out of. Taxi drivers tend to prefer larger saloons, five-door hatchbacks, estates and even crossovers or SUVs.

Cartell’s services

Cartell.ie offers a service which can reveal if any car has previously been used as a taxi or hackney.