The Birch cab
Taxi operators Birch Brothers of Kentish Town, north London, were in the vanguard of the move to diesel power for taxicabs. When the Standard Motor Co introduced the UK’s first sub-3-litre diesel engine in 1953, Birch Brothers offered a conversion scheme for the FX3 at an all-in price of £325. Those who opted for the 2.1-litre, 4-cylinder Standard unit could enjoy savings of up to 50% on their fuel bills, so the conversion proved very popular, leading Austin to introduce their own 2.2-litre diesel option on the FX3 the following year.
The one and only Birch cab,
For their next trick, Birch Brothers went one better, and designed a whole new taxi cab. Based on Standard Ten underpinnings, the Birch cab appeared in 1955, and boasted a modern – and in some respects, quite radical – design. Its most distinctive feature was a rear-hinged side door mounted aft of the nearside rear wheel arch, providing access to the luggage compartment from the kerbside. The cab’s bodywork was constructed by bus and coach builders Park Royal Vehicles Ltd, who incidentally would become part of the BLMC combine the following decade. The prototype cab (Park Royal body no. B38707) entered service in London, but without sufficient funding to put it into production, no further examples were ever built. However, the fact that the Standard Ten’s chassis had been successfully modified to meet the PCO’s requirement for a 25ft turning circle led directly to Standard-Triumph engineering a similarly tight tunring circle for the 1959 Herald.
In 1963, John Birch made another bid for a slice of the taxi market, this time using the chassis of the Standard Atlas van as his basis. He again commissioned Park Royal to build the bodywork (body no. 49760), but the project was abandoned after techincal difficulties relating to axle-loads emerged
If this is the one, found it today after looking for another taxi article for a friend who runs a heritage transport company
