Renault Taxi de la Marne

The Renault Taxi de la Marne is the nickname of the Renault Type AG, a hackney carriage that Renault built from 1905 to 1910 and its first taxi. It was the first car produced after Marcel Renault died in 1903 and was made at the large Billancourt plant. A Paris car-rental firm ordered 1,500 in 1905 after the taximeter was invented, and by 1907 Renault had sold over 3,000, with about 1,100 shipped to London. The Marne name came only in September 1914, when about 600 Paris taxis, many of them Type AGs of the G7 company, were requisitioned to carry soldiers of the 62nd Division toward the First Battle of the Marne. Historians treat their military role as marginal, but the story lifted French morale.