Carbodies

Carbodies Limited is a British company, based at Holyhead Road, Coventry. It started business as a coachbuilder, and now, as The London Taxi Company is best known for its production of London taxicabs.

The business began in 1919, when Robert 'Bobby' Jones, a former general manager at coachbuilder Hollick and Pratt took over the coachbuilding operations of his then employer, timber merchants Gooderhams and set up in business in premises acquired from Thomas Pass in West Orchard, Coventry.

Rather than make bespoke bodies to individual designs, Carbodies set out to produce coachwork to a number of standardised designs for car companies that did not have their own coachbuilding facilities. Their first major customers during the 1920s were MG and Alvis Cars. The scale of a new contract to build bodies for the MG M-Type Midget meant that they needed larger premises and in 1928, they moved to a larger site on Holyhead Road, where they remain to this day. In the 1930s, they supplied bodies for Rover, Invicta and Railton, but by far their biggest and most important customer in that decade was the Rootes Group.

During World War II the company made bodies for military vehicles. They also acquired press tools through the Lend-Lease scheme, which enabled them to make aircraft components. Carbodies also became a limited company at this time, with Bobby Jones as governing director and his son, Ernest Jones managing director.

After the war Carbodies negotiated with London taxi dealer Mann & Overton and Austin to make bodies for the Austin FX3 taxi as well as finishing and delivering the complete vehicles. They also developed a system for turning modern all-steel saloon cars into convertibles. This work was carried out on the early unit construction Hillman Minx, the Austin Somerset and Hereford, the Ford Mk1 Consul and Zephyr and, later the Mk2 Ford Consul, Zephyr and Zodiac.

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