Carbodies FX5

The Carbodies FX5 was an abandoned project by the Coventry coachbuilder Carbodies to build a London taxicab of its own design as a successor to the Austin FX4 that the firm had long made. Carbodies developed the prototype between 1977 and 1979, independently of British Leyland and of the taxi dealer Mann and Overton, and it would have used a 2.5 litre Peugeot engine. Carbodies, which had belonged to Manganese Bronze Holdings since 1973, dropped the project in 1979 because the development costs were too high, and production was abandoned over what one history calls excessive tooling costs. No FX5 ever entered production, and the FX4 stayed on London streets. Its chassis was reused for the later CR6 experimental prototypes, which also failed to reach production.