London Cabs Try Hacking It on the Streets of L.A.

Within the boxy and ubiquitous London taxi cab, humorist Alan Brien once noted in Punch, a person may perform all human activities not requiring main drainage.

Within the dark restrictions of public transportation in Los Angeles, now reasons businesswoman Francesca Gallo, there should be ample demand for the centuries-proven versatility, personality, romance and utility absolute of the British hack.

So she has launched London Taxi Ltd., a cluster of six expatriate cabs only too happy to be shedding the slush of Chelsea for the permawarmth of Santa Monica.

The padded caverns these vehicles offer as passenger compartments come with yesterday’s edition of The Times of London and this month’s chichi from Tatler magazine. The cabbies, of course, are authentic, green-card-carrying Englishmen with dialects the full socioeconomic stretch from Laurence Olivier to Michael Caine.

Anxious to Expand Service

“I am thinking that some day, I’d like to bring in enough of these vehicles to build a major transportation service for Los Angeles,” said Gallo, 45, a real estate agent and partner in a Woodland Hills food business before cabs became her bread and butter. “Off the top of my head, I’d say 50 London cabs with five cars in every major area . . . downtown, Miracle Mile, Westwood, the San Fernando Valley.

“You see, there is something so special about the London taxi. It’s British dignity and solidarity. It’s Sherlock Holmes and World War II and ‘Upstairs, Downstairs.’ When you ride in it, a little bit of London comes through and it’s. . . .”

Hold on, luv. What hope of survival has any new taxi service in a city that’s already an endless stretch of limousines picking up where 2,000 cabs leave off? Also a town with a reputation for chewing up beautiful schemers, including those visionaries who once tried to transport us in gondolas and rickshaws.

“I don’t want to antagonize anyone because this is not an easy business to be in,” Gallo continued. “But in Los Angeles, many people do fall short in serving the general public. When you order a cab, you just don’t know what kind of vehicle is going to drive up, who your driver is going to be, and in most cases, the cabs are . . . well, they’re . . . well, scruffy.”

Limousines, it may be claimed, are fine for Johnny Carson, high school proms and Napa champagne in Lithuanian crystal. Images notwithstanding, says Gallo, “there are people who love limousines and wouldn’t look at one of my boxes.

“On the other hand, there are those who just don’t like limousines because they’ve been around for so long . . . and we’re new, unique, stylish and very dignified.”

Whatever style and dignity does surround the London taxi, it clearly is rooted in history, 17th-Century revolution, Oliver Cromwell and all that. It was Cromwell--one year after his dissolution of British Parliament and cancellation of members’ transportation perks--who authorized the Fellowship of Master Hackney Coachmen. Hackney was and is the London borough where the horse-drawn fellowship was formed. Hence hackney carriage, hackney horse and hacks who drive hacks.

Jack the Ripper, teaches one school of thought, may have killed some of his victims inside the dark of a hackney cab. On the less notorious side of the law, all stiff upper stalwarts of British literature--from Bulldog Drummond through Simon Templar to George Smiley--used London taxis to pursue their capers and culprits.

During World War II, about 400 cabs were mounted with machine guns and sent to the country on paratrooper patrol. Others stayed in town to do the blitz as Auxiliary Fire Service vehicles.

Prince Rainier once bought a London taxi for Princess Grace--as the ultimate shopping cart capable of carrying more merchandise than a Harrod’s catalogue.

Today, there are 13,000 cabs patrolling London. They can turn on a sixpence. Each will pile up 700,000 miles in an average 10-year life span and still be strong enough to duke it out with a double-decker bus.

And they remain an agreeable, indefatigable, memorable and nostalgic symbol of London. As Checker cabs are to New York, gondolas are to Venice and cable cars are to San Francisco.

Gallo--mother of three daughters and Anglophile down to her English sideboards and landscapes--was hooked on cabs as have been millions before. At first sight.

“But it wasn’t in London,” she remembered. “It was 1984 in Los Angeles and I was doing some special housing work for people coming in for the Olympics. One day, I was driving through Woodland Hills to Ventura Boulevard and I spotted this London taxi, a 1967 FX3 Austin, sitting in somebody’s driveway.

“I stopped, went over, the door was open and there was a ‘For Sale’ sign on the cab. I got in the seat and thought: ‘What a wonderful way to finish off my housing project . . . by picking up athletes at LAX in a British taxi.’

“So I bought it for $1,000.”

She also bought a relic about as movable as Margaret Thatcher. Four months and $7,000 later, the Austin was still only good for a few blocks.

Never Made Olympics

“It never made the Olympics,” Gallo continued. “But it gave me a wonderful feeling and I knew that I would eventually have one as my everyday car.”

And so she did.

“I felt very connected to the Austin. I liked the way people looked over at me and gave a thumbs up. If I were in a bad mood, I only had to drive the taxi and collect the smiles. I felt comfortable in it, different yet dignified, and I started thinking about all the Americans who had ever ridden in a London taxi and how they must have some great memories and then I thought what if . . . “

Eureka. London Taxi Ltd. was born somewhere between Topanga Canyon Road and Gelson’s. With Gallo as president and husband Charles remaining with their banquet business.

A Mix of Vehicles

Her fleet is now a mixed bag of Beardmores, Austins and Anglo-American hybrids--taxi shells from Car Bodies of Coventry, England, mated to Ford engines by a specialty car firm in Michigan.

Their drivers are equally cosmopolitan.

Among them, Gregory Garland, a baritone British actor between miniseries; Andy Moore, a British rock drummer between gigs; Ian Hall, a British operating-room technician between health services; and Maurice Drucker, a clothing salesman between vogues.

For purists who believe that no London taxi is complete without fogged windows, diesel clatters and an aroma of Watney’s, the London Taxis of Los Angeles may disappoint.

Their interiors have been reupholstered in velour and their drivers in tuxedos. Power windows, car phones and sound systems have been added. It’s all, well, more Sheraton than Savoy.

Fleet Modernized

But, says Gallo, these are deliberate refinements, a necessary concession to American preferences.

London Taxi is available for the customary airport, theater, office party, wedding, bar and bat mitzvoth, graduation, shopping, and hotel house calls. It also offers set tours to afternoon tea wherever it is poured with elegance; to the scenery and sights of Los Angeles and her surrounds; to our gardens and galleries and the obligatory homes of the stars.

The pug-nosed cabs have become fixtures with les concierges of the Four Seasons, the Sheraton-Universal and Westwood Marquis hotels and the St. James Club.

“We are a British-based corporation with tremendous European connections,” noted Stuart Kupfer of the St. James Club. “So what better than a London taxi for my clientele . . . an extraordinary novelty in a city where there’s a Rolls-Royce at every blink and stretch limousines are normal transportation.”

Special Occasions

Kupfer recently whistled up a London taxi for the club’s honorary chairman--British actor Sir John Mills.

“It was his 80th birthday,” he said, “and Sir John was headed for a Westwood showing of “The Last Emperor.”

London Taxi has carried a Siamese princess to dinner at Spago, the less ruly to a British-American Chamber of Commerce bachelor party and David Niven Jr. to a party at Jack Haley Jr’s.

Garland recently was chauffeur to Beryl Cook, a popular British artist who paints rolypoly persons and the satire that exists unnoticed in ordinary social activities.

Garland presumed a drive to Mann’s Chinese Theater, Rodeo Drive and the Norton Simon, with dinner at Le Chardonnay.

“But all she wanted to do was eat at Taco Bell and see real life,” he said. “We went to Muscle Beach, mud wrestling at the Tropicana and Cage aux Folles because she loves to draw all these kinds of characters.”

For cabbie Moore, the irony of his work is daily.

He left home and hearth in London to find career and profit in the colonies.

Said Moore: “Now I’ve had to explain to me mum why I came 6,000 miles to Los Angeles to drive a London taxi cab.”