A recent addition to the Banfield collection, this typical London taxicab bodied by long-established coachbuilder Vincent of Reading was only acquired in 2011 from taxi enthusiast Dr Peter McWilliam of Yorkshire, who had owned it for 20 years, regularly driving it from Yorkshire to London, never using a trailer.

He had bought it to replace a Strachan-bodied cab that had been written off when a Range Rover had collided with it on the M25: "It was far and away the best of the three cabs I had seen." The Austin taxicab was sponsored by the long-established firm of taxi dealers Mann & Overton.

Introduced for 1930, it was based on the well-proven Austin Twelve private car chassis, "which has earned a wonderful reputation for reliability under all sorts of conditions in all parts of the world", duly modified to meet the stringent demands of Scotland Yard, which licensed cabs to ply for hire in London.

The original "High Lot" model Austin was supplanted in 1934 by a revised model, the LL o...