As a young boy Niels Hobbs didn't know his father. He wasn't dead, he was alive and well, but Niels never knew him. It wasn't until Niels was 7 years old that he remembers his mother putting him on a plane to meet this man, Alfred Hobbs, for the first time.
Growing up, tales of his father's exotic adventures were the stuff of Niels' bed time stories. Alfred was like a mythological character. While other children were read stories of dragons or pirates, Niels would listen, wide-eyed, as his mother recounted episodes of his father's epic adventures. Alfred Hobbs had circumnavigated the earth seven times, scaled Mount Kilimanjaro, and survived typhoons in the Southern Oceans – he was irrepressible, roaming the world to learn its secrets, but Niels' favourite story of all, was of his mother and father's greatest adventure - in the taxi.
Weeks after they were married in 1955, Alfred and Jakobine arrived in Morocco with nothing but a little wedding money and an eagerness to discover what might happen next. In Casablanca, they chanced upon a dilapidated 1935 Austin London taxi, and after a little “persuading” , became its proud, new owners. With brazen abandon, they cranked up the tired old engine and headed straight into the open sands of the Sahara Desert. Their plan was simply 'go south', but little did they realize, they were beginning a four-year odyssey to the other side of the earth, and back.
Their journey was long and adventurous – they were captured at gun-point, imprisoned in a desert fortress, and nearly killed more than once, but managed to continue onward, deeper and deeper into Africa. From the east coast they freighted the taxi to India, drove north into Pakistan, then Afghanistan. In India they met the boy Dalai Lama, who, grateful for their offers of support, gave them a small Tibetan dog. Onward they journeyed into Asia, and from the seats of their old taxi, they carved a path through the rain forests – two free-spirits with their new passenger, along for the ride.
By the the time they reached Japan they were celebrities. They appeared on a popular TV show, telling how they transformed their honeymoon into a full blown voyage of discovery... During their 4 year mobile love affair, they'd logged 38,000 km and repaired 249 flat tires. The Japanese were amazed... Then, Alfred and Jakobine... came home
Life was suddenly very different than their adventurous years with the taxi. Their days returned to "normal" and while Jakobine dreamed of starting a family together, Alfred began to long for the challenge of the open road once again. With the inertia of a sedentary life slowly eclipsing his memories, one day Alfred told Jakobine he was leaving – to “get on down the road...”
Jakobine was devastated and it would take her a long while to pick herself up and put her life back on track. But then, something neither of them could have predicted happened. Months later, they met at a party, one thing led to another, and in nine months, Alfred and Jakobine had a baby boy. Alfred tried to do what he could to support Jakobine and his new son Niels, but with little money or resources, their lives would separate again, and Alfred would drift away. Jakobine would eventually remarry. Alfred would not, but he did keep and look after the old taxi.
Growing up, Niels had a long-distance and infrequent relationship with Alfred. He would see him once a year at most, for just a short time, arriving into the wild world that was Alfred's life in Taos, New Mexico, and then returning to the more stable world of his mother.
Now, forty years later, at the age of 83, Alfred Hobbs has decided that it's time to hit the open road once again. This time, however, he may be leaving America for good. But first, there are things that he has to do, and people he needs to see. Alfred has a plan, and he needs his son's help.
Fate has placed Alfred and Jakobine at opposite ends of the legendary Route 66. In Taos, New Mexico, we find Alfred, methodically restoring the old, deteriorating taxi that he has looked after all these years, intending to take it on one last, grand journey. 50 years after his momentous adventure with Jakobine, an 83-year-old man and his son, will climb aboard a 73-year-old London taxi, determined to drive 2500 miles east to seek out and surprise the woman who is central to both of their lives. Alfred hopes she will accept his offer of “one last drive in their old taxi … before it’s too late,” then Alfred will pass that old taxi, and everything it represents, to Niels, before he says good-bye - maybe for the last time.
'Driven' is about distance and relationships, not only of a man and a women, but also a father and son. Together the two men will make a journey toward some form of closure, and perhaps, in the process, come closer to bettering understand one and other, maybe filling the gaps left by their distance years earlier. At the centre of it all is an unlikely, old, London taxi cab. A symbol of and artifact from a great adventure and a marriage, that all happened before Niels was even born.
We’ll accompany Alfred and Niels as they struggle to get the old taxi from New Mexico, across America, all the way to upstate New York. As Niels explores his father's stories, and tries to unravel Alfred's motivations for this eccentric journey through America, we will see them encounter a motley assortment of characters, each one drawing from Alfred details of his adventures with Jakobine in this very same taxi. As they drive, we’ll witness rare, archival TV interviews from the taxi's original adventure, rich photographs and vintage newspaper articles written by bewildered journalists when the ‘London Taxi’ came to town, as well as hours of 8 & 16mm ‘home movie’ footage that Alfred and Jakobine shot as they traveled. Two road trips told in parallel, moving back and forth across 50 years, from the seats of the same old taxi cab.
Finally, we’ll be beside the two men as they anxiously cross over the bridge to the farmhouse where Jakobine lives with Rusty, the gentle man she married over thirty years ago. How will Jakobine react to their surprise arrival, and to seeing the old taxi again? How will Rusty deal with the arrival of the man who was once his wife's adventurous husband, and will the old car even make it there at all? Only time will tell.
'Driven' is story of restoration - of an old car, and of old relationships. It's a unique but universal tale, reminding us it is never too late to journey into one's past, however one chooses to get there, and hopefully, in making it all the way there, the view looking back will be changed forever.