haha, the red livery have been appeared in HK since the early
50's (private cab of HK Island, in Kowloon they are all Red and
Black) (but taxi company have their own livery) and after the cross
harbour tunnel built, they standardlise the livery in 1975 (red for
Urban Cab), and in 1977 (Green cab start to appear, and in 1980
Blue cab for lantau island start to appear too)
btw, I think if the cab in S'pore get the alloy and A/T box and
also the extra wide left door with swing out seats, that would be
cool.
Some historical photo of HK cab:
In the 50's most private cabs are the same as to current colour,
but company cabs are different, and Kowloon cab are mostly black
(they have separate fare structure too, HK cab is more expensive
then Kowloon Cab.
50's picture of a UK made Cab (forgot it's name) in Causeway bay
HK.
mid 60's picture of Mercedes 180 and 190 taxis near Central (notice
both livery are similar to what we have now)
1971 picture of Kowloon cab, notice the totally different colour
then the HKI taxis, the red one/ red black once are private own,
while the green once are own by company. (also insome picture you
can see all red taxi-like vehicle with Red license plate, those are
Private hire car (which was outlaw in 1977 and convert to taxis)
and in 1983 the government changed all classes of vehicle's plate
to the front white and rear yellow configuation.
Picture taken probably during the late 1972-1975 era, the cab
closer to the front are a HK island taxi (where around 1970 they
standalise all their colour to the current colour), while you can
still see the Kowloon taxi at the back are still all red. (Also,
this is probably the time that both HKI and Kowloon taxi have
standalise their fares too)
BTW; notice that in the 50's and 60's cabs are mostly UK made
brands or Mercedes, and in 70's almost 85% of cab is Nissan
(Datsuns). in 2006, 98% of cabs are now toyota.
Even Singapore's SMART automobile taxi also same like this one in
HK ..... who copying who ?????
