From nowhere, in just a few short years (particularly allowing for recent pandemic lockdown breaks), LEVC’s latest TX taxi has become a far more commonplace sight on London’s roads than the previous LTI TX it replaced, now dominating the scenery and adding greatly to the pleasure of visiting and exploring the United Kingdom’s capital city (from the rear seat, as well as externally, as I discovered when I briefly got caught in the rain and hailed a new TX to spare me from taking a soggy walk from The Strand to Pall Mall).
As the styling of new vehicles has increasingly become homogenous, indistinct and bland (especially SUVs, which mostly look the same and are becoming difficult to tell apart from one another), the new LEVC TX taxi really stands out as an uncommonly discerning, intelligent and appealing piece of modern design. It has a uniquely British ‘look’ that cleverly combines both tradition and future-focus in one appealing, stylish package, adding up to arguably one of the best looking and thoughtfully-designed new vehicles currently built anywhere in the world.
National identity was once a prevalent and marketable feature of all cars, with most vehicles’ origins being obvious through the character and execution of their individualistic designs. A rustic and austere Citroën 2CV or Renault 4, for example, could only have been a French creation, with the stark ‘Bauhaus’ functionality and efficiency of a Volkswagen Beetle or Porsche 356 being Sehr Deutsch. The style and elegance of a classic Alfa Romeo, Maserati or Ferrari reflected Italian brio and grace, and the larger-than-life flamboyance and confidence of a 1950s Cadillac, Plymouth or Edsel was instantly recognisable as a product of the optimistic United States of America.
Today though, be they from Paris, Pforzheim, Pisa, Pittsburgh or Peterborough, most new vehicles look essentially the same with almost any trace of nationalistic character and personality eliminated. Look at a current VW Tiguan, for example, and it could just as easily have originated in Japan, France, South Korea, the USA, almost anywhere, rather than being obviously German. The same goes for virtually any current new car you care to think of.